Planning for Growth? Re-thinking the Rural Tourism Opportunity1

Mair/Canadian Society of Extension 2001
4
community they want to protect, build upon and prevent
from continuing. While this process requires facilitation,
care is taken to ensure that those participating are in control
of all decisions through consensus. The next stages of the
community visioning exercise involves slotting tourism development
into the created vision and devising strategies
about how to reach this goal. While the research is still at
early stages, there are many exciting instances of collaboration,
enhanced understanding and mutual respect that form
over the course of this particular exercise. Participants in
two of these exercises have determined that it should be
undertaken again with as many people from the community
as possible. The challenge remains in terms of engendering
the initiative and energy to design a flexible, communitybased
tourism planning process but these first efforts reveal
a buy-in which helps to ensure the momentum is indigenous
and self-directed.
Conclusion
In their work on collaborative recreation and park services
planning, Hope and Dempsey (2000) have utilised community
decision conferences and conclude that this type of
planning:
should represent what people want, project imaginatively
what might be, and recognize realistically
what is possible. It must also actively
involve the stakeholders and seek to
build consensus around shared community
values in order to achieve genuine commitment
to implementation. (p. 63-4)
As researchers and planners investigate the role of tourism
in rural development, attention must be paid not just to the
players in the community and the importance of inclusivity,
but also on the context. As was mentioned earlier, tourism is
being introduced in small communities around the world as
the quick fix for development ills. Tourism is being asked to
generate a plethora of benefits for communities and thus
must be taken seriously. For example, as part of its rural jobs
strategy and to encourage development in rural areas, the
provincial government in Ontario earmarked $30 million dollars
for rural projects - over $7 million of which went to rural
tourism projects. That number indicates that nearly onethird
of rural development funding is steering rural tourism
growth. The appeal of tourism for rural development fits
alongside the ideals of entrepreneurial growth insofar as it
means the government can take a smaller role. As is shown
above, however, entrepreneurially driven tourism leads to
problems in rural communities and so must be steered much
more carefully than first considered. A long-term approach
to healthy tourism development demands the time, resources
and skills to ensure that it is built from consensus and support
and with as many members and perspectives in the
community as possible. The research described here is a
step in that direction.
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