Mark Alexander Sr. was planning a trout fishing trip to Tennessee with a friend a couple years ago and found it a labor-intensive process that he thought should be easier and faster.
“I had to get on the web and go through all these websites,” he said. “And I’m fairly technically savvy, but it took a long time to go through, identify maybe three that I wanted to check out, then had to personally call them on the phone and talk to them, then go through the process of booking (one of them). I probably made 10 or 12 phone calls to the three I decided on.”
He told his son, Mark Alexander Jr., and their friend Wade Leonard that there should be an app where travelers can find, rate, review and book any kind of outdoor experience quickly and easily.
“When they brought the idea to me, I just assumed there was something like this already out there,” Leonard said. “We looked and looked and looked, and while there are websites for fishing and hunting all over the place, or (sites) where you could find some information about hiking, nobody was trying to aggregate everything you can do outside.”
Their solution was GlobalOutdoors, a project a few years in the making. The app and website have been up and running for about nine months, but the three started officially promoting it on social media last week.
Alexander Sr. is the president of GlobalOutdoors, Alexander Jr. is chief operating officer and Leonard is chief technical officer. All three are Columbus natives and residents, with the GlobalOutdoors office on Fifth Street North.
The app has about 1,000 users and 11,000 locations globally, with a focus on the western hemisphere and most of them in Florida at the moment. Experiences can range from hunting and fishing to “whale-watching or hot-air ballooning,” Alexander Sr. said, and rates and reviews of all of these experiences make it easier for people to choose their activity and location.
Launching during a pandemic
The app is completely free to use and has seen an increase in usage over the past month and a half — most likely due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, because people are tired of staying at home, Alexander Jr. said.
Different states had different travel restrictions, which caused some confusion for app users during the stay-at-home orders in March and April. Now, Alexander Jr. said he has spoken with several travel outfitters nationwide that are “all working around the clock to make up for the pent-up demand” and the app’s usage indicates that as well.
“There are many things that can be done outdoors while being safe,” Alexander Jr. said. “People are coming around to that idea.”
GlobalOutdoors kept its social media marketing to a minimum during the stay-at-home orders. Then Leonard and the Alexanders started marketing outdoor experiences that required minimal travel and could be done alone or with family. As states loosened travel restrictions, the team gradually promoted experiences in states that were allowing both business operations and interstate travelers, Alexander Jr. said.
“Despite COVID-19, or maybe because of it, people are ready to get outside and do things,” he said.
App functions
In addition to writing reviews and contributing to forums about outdoor experiences, users can find activities in their immediate vicinity tailored to their interests with the press of a button, a feature Leonard said will be added in the next few weeks.
“Say you went to see your in-laws in Hattiesburg and you don’t have anything to do that afternoon, you could use that tool and it could show you canoeing on the (Leaf) River,” Alexander Sr. said.
Users can also book trips directly through the app and exchange messages with trip outfitters. Another upcoming feature is the ability to find websites to buy any specialized clothing or equipment necessary for a trip.
The option to buy travel insurance, in case something forces a trip to be canceled — “like a pandemic,” Alexander Sr. said — is not yet available on the app but will be.
The team hopes to eventually add a fee-based concierge service to the app in order to help users get hunting licenses or other necessary tools for a trip, Leonard said.
The app is meant not just to make travelers’ experiences easier but also help outfitters and business owners boost their own profiles, especially since most do not have an online presence, he said.
“The system was designed so it would be as simple as possible for someone to create a GlobalOutdoors page,” Leonard said. “(We say) if you can start an email account, you can start a GlobalOutdoors page, and that’s true whether you’re the biggest lodge in Aspen, Colorado, or somebody with some property in your backyard and you want to make a little money letting people fish on your land.”
“Or start doing float trips right here on the (Tombigbee) River,” Alexander Sr. added.
‘Any kind of outdoor experience anybody has’
The Jackson-based software company LifeCycle Solutions helped develop the app, and Brandon-based Addison Hall Designs worked on the aesthetics of the app, which Leonard said the team is proud of.
The co-founders all agreed it was important for developers and designers to understand their reasons for creating the app.
“How many people have we talked to about this socially and professionally? Thousands?” Alexander Sr. said. “Has anybody said, ‘That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard of?’ No, without exception, they all go, ‘That’s a really good idea.'”
The app is currently holding a free trip giveaway, and winners will be able to choose from eight trips all over the country, such as fly fishing in Wyoming, white-water rafting in Montana, deep sea fishing on the Gulf Coast and sailing in Miami Beach, Florida.
“You can enter as many times as you want, and you just have to write as many reviews as you want,” Alexander Jr. said. “Once we get the next 1,000 reviews, we’re going to randomly start drawing winners.”
As far as their own outdoor interests, the Alexanders are avid fishermen, while Leonard described himself as “more of a hiking and looking at stuff kind of guy.” He frequents the Columbus Riverwalk, and he and his family recently hiked some trails at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee, he said.
“It was really wonderful, especially since it’s a place where you can feel responsible because you’re outside during (the pandemic) as opposed to being packed in with a bunch of other folks,” Leonard said. “As soon as we got done, I reviewed the trails on GlobalOutdoors. It’s important to note that while there are certainly places we want people to book through the app, we want any kind of outdoor experience anybody has to be put on there.”
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