The number of people who worked from a campsite nearly tripled between 2018 and 2021, according to The Dyrt, a popular app for camping. The pandemic made remote work ubiquitous, but campers soon realized that “work from home” could just as easily be “work from campsite.” In the recently published 2022 Camping Report, 24 percent of campers said they worked from a campsite in 2021.
“I’ve been traveling on the road in my camper van for the last year and a half,” says Michelle Micallef, SEO manager at The Dyrt. “It began as a pipe dream; maybe one day I’d find a remote job and spend time seeing the country. The COVID-19 pandemic ended up expediting my vanlife into reality. With remote work becoming the norm, I realized that I could be creative and productive while safely nurturing my love for nature and the outdoors.”
According to the report, 70 percent of campers said their trips include weekdays—camping on weekdays no longer has to mean using PTO or vacation days.
“Our company, like many others, made the decision to go permanently remote,” says The Dyrt CEO Kevin Long. “If you love camping and your company has embraced remote work, why stay home? A campground beats a home office any day of the week.” Long and his wife, The Dyrt founder Sarah Smith, ran the company from a camper van for the latter half of 2021.
Eighty percent of first-time campers reported using a mobile app or website to find campsites in 2021. Some of the information people were looking for was the quality of the cell service and Wi-Fi availability at campgrounds, one of dozens of criteria The Dyrt includes for the more than 44,000 campgrounds listed on the app.
“The most essential part of living on the road is being able to find reliable service and Wi-Fi for video calls and other tasks, because my career is what’s funding the lifestyle,” says Micallef. “Being able to change my office view from mountains and deserts to lakes and beaches has been a dream come true for my work-life balance. Camping in beautiful areas of the country while analyzing data, developing comprehensive SEO strategies, and executing successful digital marketing campaigns has allowed me to be the best version of myself.”
