The future of rural tourism.

Communities across the country are anxiously engaged in the hopeful cause of attracting rural travelers. Nostalgia, uncrowded natural settings, historical attractions, festivals and the desire to see something yet unseen and do things yet undone all motivate travelers to explore rural areas. Communities, however, almost always face economic hardship and deteriorating community services before looking to tourism as an answer to their problems.

Rural Tourism Opportunities

Opportunities for rural tourism abound. They include general tourism growth, increased family vacationing, environmental interest, the recent dispersion of travel through growing auto travel, economic hardship, a mature travel market, and "Ulysses factor" changing tastes and preferences), urbanization and growing weekend travel.

General Tourism Growth. A general growth in travel activity still continues today after decades of increasing travel volume. Leisure attitudes continue to grow and shift from the traditional Puritan work ethics. Though leisure time is not necessarily increasing, discretionary spending is on the rise. Kids who have traveled with their parents are growing up; those who have traveled as children are the most likely to travel as adults.

Family Vacations. Family vacations are again becoming important to the tourism industry. That important marketing harbinger, the baby boom generation, is producing a baby boomlet. With children has come a turning to traditional family values. A group called "Renaissance Fathers" are men who have made family life a top priority in their daily living. The recent political attention to "family values" also demonstrates an increasing interest in family life. With a return to family values comes an interest in spending time together. Much of that time together will result in family vacation time, whether short weekend trips or longer touring vacations.

The Environment and Tourism. The growing interest in the environment and natural resources also bodes well for rural tourism futures. Interest in environmental concerns continues to grow. Ninety four percent of all consumers consider environmental protection "a very important issue." Buzz words like "adventure travel" and "ecotourism" represent a burgeoning travel market niche. Eight million Americans have taken an ecotourism trip, and 43 million more adults are likely to take one in the future. Likewise, 85 percent of travelers claim they are likely to support or patronize travel companies that help preserve the environment. Rural communities are often found in environmental settings attractive to travelers.

Dispersion of Tourism. Perhaps of most importance to rural tourism is the recent dispersion of tourism. Tourists are traveling to a greater variety of destinations. Auto travel makes up 76 percent of all miles traveled. That figure had declined steadily for several decades, until the late 1980s when auto travel increased and air travel decreased. One out of every ten families now owns a recreational vehicle. Increasing auto travel tends to disperse travel across the nation's vast network of highways more so than air travel and its limited network of airport terminals.

Economic hardship also provides an impetus for rural tourism. The weak dollar abroad brings large numbers of foreign visitors to the United States. These visitors often are repeat vacationers to the U.S. Once they have visited the coastal cities, they are more likely to travel to rural, inland destinations. The weak dollar also tends to keep Americans at home, traveling to new or familiar places. Recessionary travel is also good for rural areas. During difficult economic times, people don't quit traveling altogether. instead, they travel by car closer to home for shorter periods of time.

The growing number of mature travelers also tends to disperse tourism. They tend to prefer automobile and recreational vehicle travel more than other age groups. They will also demand an increasing number of profit-generating services as they travel to rural areas.

The Ulysses factor, or desire to explore new places, also spurs rural tourism activity. The more people travel, the more likely they are to search out new and out-of-the-way places.

Changing Tastes and Preferences. Changing tastes and preferences also play a role in the coming popularity of rural areas. The influences of the baby boom generation on all of American culture are unmistakable, but generally fickle. These tastes will bless or curse rural tourism destinations. Recent interest in rural landscapes and activities is apparent in the popularity of such movies as Field of Dreams, Dances with Wolves, and City Slickers. Western historical events, like the 150th anniversary of the Oregon Trail, seem to be drawing a growing crowd to rural western states. The popularization of wide open rural landscapes like the deserts of the southwest and the Great Plains is also surging in recent decades. Increasing Urbanization.

Increasing urbanization also plays a role in rural tourism. The more entrenched urbanites become in their concrete living and working environments, the more likely they are to reach out in their leisure to natural rural settings. The natural law of action/reaction suggests that increasing urbanization in work and residence will cause a reaction of increasing rural recreation and tourism.

Growing Weekend Travel. Several demographic trends have led to a large increase in weekend trips. Dual-income families, decreasing leisure time, single-parent households and economic recession have contributed to this major tourism shift. Weekend trips have grown 34 percent in the last five years to over 200 million weekend trips per year for pleasure purposes. These weekend trips are generally taken to destinations 200 to 500 miles from home. This is an ideal target market for many rural destinations.

These several tourism trends demonstrate the growing potential for rural communities to advantageously capture a significant visitor market. The future of rural tourism, however, is not all rosy hues. Some obstacles provide certain challenges to rural tourism development.

Obstacles to Rural Tourism Development

The obstacles that rural communities face as they turn to tourism take some of the luster off of the shining opportunities. These obstacles include drawing power, dispersion of attractions and services, meager secondary economic impacts, current rural images, internal community conflicts, identifying and reaching target "niche" markets and destination life cycles.

Drawing Power. Not all rural attractions have wide ranging drawing power. Attractions developed and promoted by community residents are not always important to people who live outside the local county. Local citizens often discount other attractions without realizing that the potential drawing power of their attraction may be regional, national or even international.

Dispersion of Attractions and Services. Rural attractions and services are often prohibitively dispersed from one another. Ideal tourism development, however, follows did? principle of clustering. Travelers are more likely to visit an area when they can experience several attractions or enjoy several services in close proximity.

Meager Secondary Economic Impacts. The commonly meager secondary economic impacts of rural tourism also dilute its ability to truly diversify and build rural economies. Gross output multipliers are generally between 1.2 and 1.4 for rural counties. For rural tourism to prosper the host communities, support industry linkages will need to expand in rural areas, much as they have in agricultural industries.

Current Rural Images. The complexities of developing and maintaining an image require that rural areas build on current images. The obstacles this presents can be illustrated by comparing the popular images held about the Caribbean Islands and the state of Nebraska. The islands promote the popular image of the four S's: "surf, sun, sand and sex." A recent survey revealed that the image of Nebraska is best characterized by the three F's of "flat, farms and friendly people." Tourism in rural Nebraska faces a sure challenge as it entices tourists to visit. Many rural areas must find a way to link agriculture and tourism in a way that attracts visitors.

Internal Community Conflicts. Another common obstacle for rural communities is the internal community conflicts that plague so many small towns. Like ancient feuds between the Hatfields and McCoys, community divisions are common and long held. In an industry dependent on cooperation, small town politics and hard feelings can be crippling.

Identifying and Reaching Niche Target Markets. One more obstacle is the difficulty of limited funds to identify and reach "niche" target markets. Though rural tourism is growing, it has not been, and may never be, attractive for mass market tourism. Rural areas will therefore need to find those subgroups of people who would be attracted to them if they had appropriate information. This is even an obstacle for large private concerns, and thus becomes a special problem for small rural towns.

Destination Lifecycle. A final obstacle is dealing with the tourism product lifecycle. Tourism destinations typically go through a cycle that includes infancy, growth, maturity, saturation and decline. The length of time a destination is positioned in each phase depends upon many factors. How each community will advance through this cycle depends on the quality of its experience, and the nature of its popularity. The entire phenomena of rural tourism may find itself locked within this product lifecycle with eventual decline inevitable.

These obstacles balance the portrait of the future outlook for rural tourism. The opportunities are bright, and the obstacles can be difficult. Meeting the challenges to successfully develop rural tourism will take careful planning, wise actions and perseverance.

Rural Tourism Development Challenges

The following suggestions are aimed at grabbing rural tourism opportunities and overcoming the obstacles. The major challenges identified here are developing attractions, encouraging entrepreneurship, informing markets, reacting to changing tastes, providing quality service and preserving attractions and attractiveness.

Developing Attractions. The first priority of rural areas ought to be developing attractions. Even if that means nothing more than carefully defining the attraction and setting it apart for visitation, or preparing and placing appropriate signage, it will be better than enthusiastically promoting a mediocre experience. Too often communities and states spend large amounts of money promoting attractions that are poor in quality or in need of proper packaging. Development requires investment of human and monetary resources from the private, nonprofit and public sector, and it cannot be overlooked. Investment is often more painful than mindless promotion, but definitely more important for rural tourism.

Encouraging Entrepreneurship. The second challenge to be met is that of providing adequate services for travelers while obtaining meaningful economic benefits. Small businesses are those most likely to buy supplies and hire employees locally, thus increasing the secondary economic benefits from tourists. Rural areas that are on the way to somewhere else are constantly interested in capturing pass-through travelers. Only quality and unique private sector businesses will be able to capture these important tourists.

Informing Markets. The more sophisticated rural tourist seeks information rather than propaganda. This challenge asks rural areas to find ways to disseminate information to potential rural visitors wherever they may be. These potential tourists not only need to be told about the existence of unique rural attractions, but also what to expect in the way of services and their quality.

Reacting to Changing Tastes. The next challenge focuses on the changing tastes and preferences of major market groups. Remember that the influences on popular culture of the baby-boom generation cannot be underestimated. Those communities that stay abreast of the market research of others, that follow these trends and that conduct their own program of market research will be far ahead of those who do not.

Providing Quality Service. Nothing can ruin a trip quicker than lousy service at a motel, restaurant or gas station. Much rural tourism is repeat business. That repeat business can be quickly choked off with poor quality services and attractions. The quality control of services is especially challenging. It behooves rural tourism enterprises to do all they can to assure quality services.

Preserving Attractions. The challenge of sustainability is all important to the future of rural tourism development. Those attractions that are ruined or worn out quickly take from the community that which it cherished and leave it with nothing, including the reason for tourists to visit in the first place. We must carefully monitor environmental and social impacts from tourism.

Rural tourism cannot be the answer to all the problems faced by rural areas. It is not a panacea. Tourism can also be seen as a two-edged sword, bringing economic benefit, but sometimes severe environmental and social problems. To keep tourism opportunities and challenges in proper perspective, rural communities should establish a "value system" for rural tourism. This value system ought to include a commitment to sustainability, careful tourism planning, regional cooperation, quality service, hospitality, and preservation of artificial, cultural and natural environments.