| A review of the scant research literature on the impact of tourism development on rural communities suggests that village officials rarely anticipate the negative consequences of their decision to depend on tourism for economic development. In order to better understand this phenomenon, and to search out strategies that are most likely to have positive effects on both the community as a whole and on various interest groups within the community, a mixed methods design was used to gather qualitative and quantitative data to answer two major questions. At the macro level, the first question asks “What are the strategies for tourism development in rural communities that are most likely to have a positive economic and social impact on the community?” The second question, at the individual level, asks “What are the strategies for tourism development that will contribute to the well-being of both the residents who were there before development occurred and those who came during and after the arrival of the tourism industry?” The primary site for this community study was a popular ski resort community Ellicottville, New York. Secondary data from two additional tourism destinations, Hilton Head, South Carolina and Door County, Wisconsin, were used to strengthen the findings on the effects of two contrasting strategies, community-based and outside controlled development. Results suggest that the impact that tourism development brings to an area goes well beyond the typical economic indicators often times cited in this sort of research.; Tourism touches on all aspects of day to day life in the host community, and the strategy used for developing local resources has a great impact on how beneficial development is for the local population present in the area before the developers arrived. |
