Communities across America are competing for tourist dollars, but what can they do to stand out from the crowd? Ed McMahon shares ten principles to "preserve the goose that lays the golden egg."
Tourism is big business. Americans spend more than $800 billion a year on travel and recreational pursuits away from home. Tourism is one of the three largest industries in every American state and a critical factor in the world economy.
However, tourism is also a doubled edged sword. On the one hand, it provides communities with many benefits: new jobs, an expanded tax base, enhanced infrastructure, improved facilities and an expanded market for local products, art and handicrafts. In short, it can be an important tool for community revitalization. And on the other hand, it can create problems and burdens for local communities, such as crowding, traffic congestion, noise, increased crime, haphazard development, cost-of-living increases and degraded resources.
So the question is: how do you maximize the benefits of tourism, while minimizing the problems?
In this piece, an edition of which first ran in Virginia Town and City Magazine, Ed McMahon shares ten principles to cultivate a responsible tourism economy.
FULL STORY: Responsible Tourism: How to Preserve the Goose that Lays the Golden Egg
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