In the past two decades, the tourism industry has experienced unprecedented growth. Increasing consumer demand for educational and participatory travel experiences has resulted in a variety of specialty niche markets such as nature-based tourism, cultural-heritage tourism, and agritourism. Today, more and more communities seek to link strategic tourism planning with sustainable development. This book is designed to provide organizations and individuals with a development process and training materials to help communities plan, initiate, and expand tourism as a means of long-term economic development. The development concepts are applicable to communities of all sizes and at various stages of tourism development.
This book is intended to help communities expand their economic development potential by developing their travel and tourism industry. It is designed for community groups working on tourism development and for others interested in expanding their knowledge and skills in Tourism.
This book provides knowledge and tools to help your community develop or improve its tourism efforts. Ideally, a community will work through the process as laid out in the manual-taking the time and effort to develop a comprehensive community tourism plan and implementation strategy. |
