INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM RESEARCH

Int. J. Tourism Res. 6, 151164 (2004)

Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/jtr.481

Rural Tourism Development in the USA

William C. Gartner*
University of Minnesota, 1994 Buford Avenue, 248B Cla Off Building, St Paul, MN 55108-6040, USA

ABSTRACT
Rural tourism has been a subject of study
since the early days of tourism scholarship.
Most of tourisms deleterious impacts were
identified from studies conducted in rural
settings. It is only recently, however, that
rural tourism has become a special focus of
study, dissimilar enough from urban
tourism, to be a study subject unto itself.
This paper reviews some of the history of
rural tourism development in North
America with most of the attention paid to
the USAs experience, with some examples
from Canada. The reason for this is the
huge economic difference between the two
countries with respect to tourism flows and
impacts. In reviewing the history of rural
development in the USA, the argument is
made that most developments are
unplanned and result from market and
economic forces that have greatly
transformed the American rural landscape.
A review of these transformational forces is
provided. It is also shown that rural
destinations are used, primarily, by local
tourists and do not, with few exceptions,
cater to an international clientele.
After the historical perspective is
presented an argument is made that current
rural tourism development practices rely on
an old paradigm, which is to use local
attributes as the primary basis for
development and marketing strategies. This
has led, in recent years, to a great deal of
development attention being paid to the
*Correspondence to: W. C. Gartner, University of
Minnesota, 1994 Buford Avenue, 248B Cla Off Building,
St Paul, MN 55108-6040, USA.
Email: wcg@umn.edu

cultural/heritage attributes of a place. Using

research conducted in the state of
Minnesota on highway travellers and
tourists to rural destinations, a new way to
look at actual and potential visitors is
offered. Instead of an attribute-specific
development approach, a benefits-based
model is suggested as a different way to
position rural tourism destinations.
Copyright 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Received 12 August 2003; Revised 20 November 2003;
Accepted 1 December 2003

Keywords: rural tourism; rural

transformation; benefit-based marketing;
culture and heritage; attribute-based tourism
development.

INTRODUCTION

his article addresses rural tourism issues

from a USA perspective, with some references to Canada. Originally the focus
was on all of North America but the failure to
cover such a large area is due more to the lack
of insightful knowledge, coupled with lack of
significant literature, to address the broader
geographical issue. There is also the question
of dominance. Mexico has a population of
approximately 100 million with an average
annual income per capita (adjusted for purchasing power equity) of US$9100. By contrast,
Canada with a population of only 31.5 million
has a per capita income of US$24 800. When
it comes to tourisms economic impacts the
USA, with a population of approximately 283
million and per capita income of US$36 200
Copyright 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

152
is the big gorilla (Siakhenn.tripod.com/
percapita.htm).
Rural tourism in North America is a story
of domestic tourism. Aramberri (2003) in
analysing the importance and extent of
tourisms influence, argues that tourism is not
as widespread as many claim but instead is
personal activity and economic development
primarily for those living in developed
nations. He also argues that international
tourism is much less economically important
to a developed nations economy when compared with domestic tourism.
As will be detailed below, tourism development in rural America began with homegrown demand and continues to grow from
this source. Mexico and, to a lesser extent,
Canada are both heavily dependent on international tourists, primarily from the USA, to
support their tourism economies but in many
parts of the USA international visitors are
uncommon. According to the U.S. Department
of Commerce (1997) international visitors to
the USA visit on average only 1.6 states
although they stay an average of 15 days in the
country on each trip. Most of the international
visitors do not move far from urban areas or
what are being termed consumption centres
(Gartner and Lime, 2000). For example, extensive visitor profile analysis in the State of
Minnesota revealed that most visitors to rural
tourism destinations were from the State of
Minnesota (Gartner et al., 2001). International
visitors were in the state primarily to visit
friends and relatives or attend conventions in
the larger urban cities. Similar visitor profile
studies in Michigan (Holecek et al., 2000)
essentially reveal the same picture. This is not
just a Midwestern phenomenon as the U.S.
Travel Survey reveals that over half of all trips,
100 miles or more, originated and ended in the
same state (U.S. Department of Transportation,
2002). Canada mimics the results in the USA
with the intra/interprovince same day travel
ratio at 22 : 1 and the overnight at 3.9 : 1
(Canada Tourism, 2002).
Rural tourism in North America can be
viewed from the perspective of the international tourist. Accessing rural tourism areas
anywhere in North America is not an inexpensive proposition. Mexico is not known for its
transportation access through rural areas.
Copyright 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

W. C. Gartner
Roads are of poor quality and numerous travel
bulletins have been issued about the dangers
of driving in many parts of rural Mexico.
Canada is a very large country with the majority of its population located in the eastern
third. Many of the significant rural tourism
products developed in central and western
Canada began as stops along the railway.
Others, in the eastern third were heavily
dependent on the domestic population as well
as the large number of USA citizens living
close to the border. From personal experience,
seasonal home development along Lake Erie,
next to and in close proximity to Point Pele
Provincial Park, Canada, was dominated
through the 1960s and 1970s by residents of
southeastern Michigan.
Travelling through the USA is not inexpensive either as accessing much of rural America
requires an automobile. Rural domestic
tourism in the USA is heavily tied to highway
infrastructure. It is estimated that USA domestic tourism is a multiple of nine or ten times the
level of international tourism, accounting for
almost 500 million trips in 1999. The highway
system in the USA, with the development of
the interstate network occurring shortly after
the end of World War II and still expanding
today, coupled with an extensive system of
secondary roads, has made almost every rural
area in the lower 48 states plus Hawaii easily
accessible. The lack of an extensive rail system
and the vast distances between places make
highways the only viable transportation link
for many rural communities. By contrast,
much of Europe is easily accessible by train.
Economic theory of demand, and supported
by numerous studies based on travel cost
methodology, reveal that tourism is a normal
good with a downward sloping demand
curve. As costs of access to rural destinations
increase, more and more people will be economically prevented from visiting. Thus, the
results from visitor profile research that
tourists are primarily home grown and from
nearby populations centres is supported by
economic theory. Therefore, a strong rural
tourism economy must be linked to some
nearby population center(s). Further support
for using private motor vehicles for accessing
rural America is provided by Mallet and
McGuckin (not dated). They point out that
Int. J. Tourism Res. 6, 151164 (2004)

Rural Tourism in the USA

many of the factors leading to increases in travelling by automobile for recreation purposes
are on the rise.
This paper will examine some of the history
of the rural tourism development movement
in North America. It will not delve into many
of the problems experienced by community
residents as a result of tourism development;
instead, the reader is referred to Van der Stoep
(2000), Gartner (1996) and Stokowski (1996,
2000) for more depth on this subject. An argument will be offered that rural tourism development was opportunistic and not planned
through much of its history. Glennon (2003)
states that Americans favour leaving the free
market to operate until it fails. Only then does
corrective action take place. That is a fairly
accurate depiction of rural tourism development in the USA over the years.
Today, given the economic realities of rural
America and, to a lesser extent, Canada, planning for tourism development is being conducted. Much of the credit for that change,
apart from economic forces, goes to the higher
education system in both the USA and Canada
where efforts have been underway for years
to produce self-help guidebooks and manuals
for community rural tourism development. A
point that will be made is that much of the
early development work is based on a destination, attribute-specific approach. In other
words, single activity/attraction options (e.g.
skiing, rafting, golfing) constituted the basis
for tourism development and were the main
features of subsequent marketing and promotion programmes. That mentality continues
today even though recent research argues for a
more holistic, benefit-based approach to marketing rural tourism destinations.
TOURISM IN RURAL AREAS
Tourism in peripheral areas has been a focus
of study for a number of years; the same,
however, cannot be said about urban tourism
(Suh and Gartner, 2004). Early tourism studies
did not try and differentiate between rural and
urban tourism, although one could argue, by
looking at impacts identified, that most of this
research must have been conducted in rural
settings. The origins of the early academic
Copyright 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

153
work regarding tourism can be traced to the
late 1960s and early 1970s. Jafari (1988) refers
to this period as the Advocacy platform.
During this time, most of the published works
on tourism were supportive of the activity,
often touting its beneficial (mostly economic)
impacts. In the mid-1970s, a spate of studies
appeared that countered many of the
favourable benefits of tourism development.
This period has been labelled the Cautionary
platform (Jafari, 1988). It is during this time
that rural-based community studies began to
assess some of the environmental and sociocultural impacts resulting from unplanned or
poorly planned tourism development. As a
result of the criticisms brought by contributors
to the Cautionary platform, new community
development models began to appear. Terms
such as eco-tourism, cultural tourism and
green tourism began to appear, which in some
cases became major selling themes for the
tourist trade. Studies proposing new models of
tourism development were categorised as part
of the Adaptancy platform (Jafari, 1988). Most
of the new models called for less intrusive
types of development, more sensitivity to local
needs and a greater reliance on local capital for
development. As urban areas were already
physically transformed, most of the attention
for these new types of tourism development
was centred on rural or peripheral areas.
Demand for touristic use of rural areas has
accelerated in recent years. Qualities inherent
in a rural setting, such as personal contact,
authenticity, heritage and individualism, resonate with an increasingly urban-based population (Long and Lane, 2000). Media attention
on the authenticity of rural areas and, especially in the USA, a rural life that some see
threatened by the expansion of large retailers
(e.g. Walmart) and global food service chains
(e.g. McDonalds) and loss of the traditional
rural economic base (i.e. agriculture) has led to
the search for the unspoiled rural community.
Unfortunately it is exactly the unspoiled
nature of the experience that results in rapid
transformation of the resource base to accommodate increasing numbers of visitors. Understanding and exploiting tourism for rural
communities while trying to maintain a traditional lifestyle is a difficult process (Perry et al.,
1986; OECD, 1994).
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WHAT IS RURAL?
Defining rural may seem to be an elementary
exercise. Countries are fairly good at keeping
accurate numbers of where people are living
and using a standard definition of the amount
of people residing in a particular area is one
criterion fairly commonly used to categorise
communities as urban or rural. In the USA, the
Economic Research Service (ERS) classifies any
community with less than 2500 permanent
residents as rural. Communities with 2500 to
19 999 permanent residents are classified as
less urbanized with any community over
20 000 classified as urban. The U.S. Census
Bureau defines rural areas as all non-urban
areas, with urban defined as a community of
over 50 000 permanent residents. Other federal
agencies use other definitions for what is rural.
For a more in-depth review of the various
classification schemes currently used to define
rural in the USA the reader is referred to Flora
et al. (1992).
Canada, a country with approximately 10%
of the population of the USA, has defined, redefined, and defined again, through the years,
what constitutes rural. The latest definition
used by Statistics Canada to define rural areas
is: persons living in sparsely populated lands
lying outside urban areas (i.e. persons living
outside places of 1000 or more inhabitants or
outside places with population densities of
400 or more people per square kilometer) (du
Plessis et al., 2002). There is obviously a vast
difference between the definitions used by
each country when trying to define rural.
From a tourists point of view, travel to areas
that have not been extensively developed for
tourism can be considered rural. Conversely,
areas that have been heavily transformed for
tourism development but have low levels of
year-round residents can also be considered
rural. Using the above USA definitions Rehobeth Beach, Delaware, with a year-round population of approximately 1500 people, would
be classified as rural even when the summer
population approaches multiples of 100 or
more of its year-round population. Similarly,
areas in the authors home state of Minnesota
that have become tourism magnets, such as the
Brainerd Lakes area with its up-scale resorts
and world class golf courses, are considered
Copyright 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

W. C. Gartner
rural even though during the high use summer
months the population density exceeds what
one would normally encounter in a suburban
community.
Long (1998) proposes a definition of rural
that reflects lifestyles one is likely to encounter
in a visit to a rural community; Rural can
be perceived as a place of safety, with solid
values, surrounded by open space and natural
beauty, where one is treated respectfully and
friendly. In a functional sense, rural can be
considered a place where small-scale enterprises dominate the economic scene, open
space is abundant, contact with nature or traditional societies is offered, development is
slow growing using local capital and the types
of touristic activity offered varies but reflects
local resource capabilities (Lane, 1994). Getz
and Page (1997) argue that even local enterprises are capable of growing quickly and rural
tourism is still a possibility even with rapid
transformation of the physical plant. The level
of physical plant transformation, issues of
authenticity and maintenance of traditional
lifestyles are relevant as they relate to products
sought by the rural tourist.
Longs (1998) definition of rural, once
accepted, changes the focus from a statistical,
easy to measure, parameter to one that is more
ambiguous and benefit based. For the purpose
of this paper, the basic elements of Longs definition is accepted as a new way to look at rural
tourism development. This will become clearer
after a review of the transformational history
of rural areas is addressed.
TRANSFORMATION
Rural development in the USA and Canada is
a story of major and continuing transformation. The first rural tourism destinations were
developed by the railroads. Railroad companies were partially paid in land allocations
along the routes they built. Lodges at Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks in the USA
and Banff National Park in Canada were constructed by rail companies to serve, initially,
as housing for workers and, subsequently, as
resorts for early nature lovers. Rail access was
also important for many other rural developments, such as fishing lodges and camps, in the
northern USA and Canada.
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Rural Tourism in the USA

Much early rural tourism development in
the USA was directly tied to the provision of
public lands for recreation purposes. Under
the Roosevelt administration of the early 1900s
the National Park System in the USA was
created. Large tracts of some of the best examples of scenic and wild land were set aside for
the dual purposes of preservation and recreational use. Another important federal land
management agency, the U.S. Forest Service,
was created around the same time (1905).
However, it was not until after World War II
that major rural tourism development was
associated with recreational use on public
lands. Siehl (2000) examines the history of
recreation policies in the USA after World
War II and argues that the modern downhill
(alpine) ski industry enjoyed today, with much
of the activity taking place on public lands,
essentially came into being from demand generated by returning ski troops from the war.
Vail in Colorado, Sugarbush in Vermont and
Crystal Mountain in Washington are examples
of major rural tourism destinations tied to this
demand-driven increase in downhill skiing
(Burton, 1971; cited in Siehl, 2000). Similarly,
the white water rafting industry started with
the use of surplus rubber rafts left over
from the War. The growth of this industry was
predicted by Wandless (cited in Siehl, 2000) in
1943. There are other examples (i.e. jeeps used
for off-road touring) but the common thread
between these new forms of recreation was an
excess supply of new technology and equipment left over from the war and an increasingly wealthy population that turned its
attention to travelling and enjoying the great
outdoors. Arguably, the greatest boost to rural
tourism development came into being some
time after the War with the development of
the interstate highway network that quickly
formed major transportation routes for
tourists. As road access developed, gateway
communities began to form around important tourist destination areas. Early examples
of this type of rural tourism development
conform nicely to the model offered by Gunn
(1979). In Gunns model there are three components needed for successful development:
a gateway where basic services (e.g. lodging,
food) are found; attractions that exert the pull
(Dann, 1977) or reason for visitation; and transCopyright 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

155
portation linkages that connect service centres
to attractions and gateways to markets.
The demand for outdoor recreation activities
from returning troops, combined with increasing prosperity, personal mobility and children
at home were the primary factors fueling the
push into more and more travel into and
through rural America. Supply in the first few
years after World War II was adequate but
as use of federal recreation areas increased
rapidly and steadily during the late 1940s and
through the 1950s there appeared a widening
gap between the provision of land for recreation and the demand for outdoor recreation.
USA policy during this period ignored the
supply concern as other interests (i.e. Korean
War) resulted in sharply lower budgets for
agencies charged with managing use on
federal lands (Everhart, 1983). Yet it was
during this time that many gateway communities, providing services for users of public
lands, developed or changed from ones
dealing with extractive industries (e.g. mining,
forestry) to ones dealing with tourists. One can
safely argue that one of the major catalysts for
rural tourism development in the USA was the
set-aside of large tracts of land for public use
with utilisation of these lands largely driven by
demand factors that came into being as a result
of World War II.
It was not until the late 1950s and through
the 1960s that public land policies tilted
heavily in favour of recreational use, with
legislation passed on a number of occasions
to increase the supply of public land and to
manage it for special non-industrial uses. The
last significant piece of federal legislation
in the USA that transformed thinking of how
resources were to be used was the Wilderness
Act of 1964. Siehl (2000) refers to this period
(19581968) as the golden era of recreation.
One cannot discount the importance of
federal land policy to rural tourism development. Crompton (1990) argues that annual
visitation to the Disney properties, the premier
theme parks in the USA, only equals about
13% of total annual visits to U.S. National
Parks, which comprise only a small part of the
federal land estate. Many rural tourism destinations today owe their existence to the federal
lands that they border. Yet these early destinations did not really have a good idea of what
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156
constituted a quality destination. In keeping
with the USA tradition of free market development, many gateway communities developed haphazardly and some would argue in
an unsustainable manner. Concern over how
some of the gateways developed was expressed by Rosenow and Pulshiper (1979) in
one of the first books to address rural tourism
development issues.
In the 1960s and continuing unabated today,
another form of transformation began to affect
rural America and Canada. Much of rural
North America, up until that time, had been
relegated to farming, ranching and other
resource extraction activities. Early immigration strategies offered promises of freedom
and great wealth to those willing to venture
into the frontier and homestead on government provided land. Although Powell (1879)
cautioned against settling the arid western
USA using land policies effective in the eastern
part of the USA his cautions went unheeded,
resulting in the institutionalised creation of
massive western ranches at the expense of
homesteaders (Stegner, 1992). For decades,
resource extraction industries ruled the rural
landscape of America and were the reason
many rural towns developed. Today, many of
the significant rural villages, built by timber,
agriculture or mineral wealth have become
tourist towns often relying on that early
wealth, as exhibited through classic Victorian
period architecture, to provide a unique sense
of place.
Eventually extractive mineral industries
declined in importance as primary product
prices fell and agricultural research resulted in
higher yielding crops and more intensive and
profitable agricultural practices. Both of these
changes meant fewer people living in rural
areas and an increasingly urbanised society.
Rural Americas towns and villages began to
shrink and the income divide between rural
and urban America significantly widened. It
was during the late 1970s and early 1980s that
tourism was discovered as an economic development tool for rural America. Also during the
late 1960s and early 1970s a new form of rural
tourism began to increase exponentially. The
rush to own a piece of rural America was on.
Seasonal home development, especially in
amenity-rich (e.g. lakes) areas began to rapidly
Copyright 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

W. C. Gartner
accelerate during this period (Ragatz, 1969).
Apart from a few slow periods the desire to
own land in rural areas has steadily increased
and has led to inflated land values in prime
locations (Gartner et al., 1996).
The impetus for rural tourism development,
this time, did not come from the federal government providing supply of land, excess
equipment, or appropriate policy. Nor did it
come through a fresh rush of new customers
with the exception of seasonal home or absentee land owners. Demand for rural experiences
was on an upward slope but that alone does
not explain the new look economy of rural
America. What best explains the transformation occurring during this time was simply
survival, as almost all other economic growth
options, with the exception of tourism, were
declining in importance or growing too slowly
to offset weakening economies in other industries. Van der Stoep (2000) points to the decline
of the Atlantic commercial fishing industry in
Canada as a major reason for the appearance
of newly redefined tourism communities.
Tourism is not like other industrial activities
and its status as an industry is questionable (Smith, 2003). Distribution channels are
inverted, production and consumption occur
simultaneously, inventory does not exist,
and human resource requirements are heavily
focused on service. These differences, and
others, between tourism and other industrial
activities means it is not easy to simply switch
from a traditional enterprise such as farming
into one that is heavily dependent on tourists.
Assistance with developing rural tourism
did not come, as mentioned, from the Federal
Government. Federal policy directly tied to
tourism, when there has been any, has been
focused on external (i.e. international) marketing. The only significant U.S. Federal legislation to address tourism directly was the
National Tourism Act of 1973 that established
the National Tourism Administration. Rural
tourism policy was not mentioned in this act.
Even when a national study identified a need
for rural tourism policy (Edgell, 1999) neither
Congress, nor the President, offered one. When
Congress created the National Rural Tourism
Foundation in 1992 it failed to authorise
funding for the organisation, which has struggled since its inception to meet its mandate.
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Rural Tourism in the USA

Yet, as mentioned above, it is domestic tourism
that makes rural tourism work. In the absence
of any federal guidance policy, assistance was
provided by the states. One of the most significant forms of policy transformation was tax
legislation that allowed local municipalities
to institute new taxes directed at users of,
predominantly, tourist businesses. The most
widespread of these taxes have been assessed
against users of commercial lodging establishments. These so-called bed taxes, transient
room taxes, etc., are in force in the majority of
the states (Loyancono, 1991). The widespread
adoption of accommodations taxes has been
the most significant policy to affect rural
tourism development in the USA to date.
Whereas previous to this change only large
cities, with convention centres, had enough
public and revenue based funding to create a
Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), now
almost every community with commercial
lodging, and the authority to impose additional taxes on the users of those facilities,
has the equivalent of a CVB. Not surprisingly,
most of these small town CVBs view their
role as helping those businesses that collect
the tax. In other words, putting heads on
beds is the main focus of CVB activity, not
dealing with issues that arise from tourism
development.
Other significant state policy efforts
involved the creation of tourism agencies,
divisions, or departments within state agencies. Using various funding schemes, with the
most prevalent being general state tax revenues, every state in the USA has an office
dealing with tourism marketing. By contrast,
the Federal government abolished the U.S.
Travel and Tourism Administration in 1996.
Canada did likewise with its federal tourism
agency but replaced it with one (Canadian
Tourism Commission) based on a partnership
requiring a private sector match to the money
provided by government. That policy has
proven to be highly effective in raising marketing capital as private sector contributions
now exceed the match requirement.
Other assistance in the transformation of
rural North America to one more heavily
dependent on tourism came from the higher
education establishment in the USA and
Canada. Through the Cooperative Extension
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157
Service, arising from the Morrill Act of 1862
that established the land grant system for state
universities in the USA, have come manuals,
workbooks and other resources to help communities understand and manage tourism for
their benefit. Rural tourism development has
been a common theme of these publications.
Brown (2000) has identified many of those
sources in a U.S. Department of Agriculture
publication. One of the earliest publications
dealing with rural tourism development issues
is Tourism USA: Guidelines for Tourism Development (University of Missouri, 1978).
Canadian universities have also produced
some excellent materials dealing with rural
tourism issues, such as the video Keys to
Successful Tourism Development: Lessons from
Niagara (Reid et al., 1997). Canada has also initiated a major effort, beginning in the last years
of the twentieth century, to move rural issues
much more into mainstream discussion.
Although tourism is one of those rural issues,
the location of the Rural Secretariat within
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada continues
the long tradition in Canada, and the USA,
as seeing the issues of rural North America
through the eyes of natural resource industrial
interests.
TODAYS RURAL TOURISM
Transformation of the rural tourism product
is ongoing. Early developments, as described
above, were tied to resource availability with
demand initiated from exogenous forces such
as World War II, increased disposable income
and the development of efficient transportation systems. Through the 1970s, the rural
tourism development model proposed by
Gunn (1979) seemed to fit most rural tourism
destinations. Lately, there has been a move to
turn service centres (i.e. gateway communities)
into attractions. The transformation of rural
communities such as Orlando, Florida (home
of Disney World) into urban consumption
centres has been well documented. Las Vegas,
at one time a rural gambling oasis in a relatively institutionalised gambling free society,
has been transformed into an urban area of
over 2 million permanent residents with gambling as its primary attraction augmented by
many other attractions catering to more of a
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family market. Both Orlando and Las Vegas
grew from destinations almost exclusively
dependent on domestic tourists to primary
stops for the international market. On a lesser
scale Branson, Missouri has transformed into a
consumption centre based on the performing
arts, heavily dependent on music, and still primarily catering to the domestic market. Areas
such as Brainerd, Minnesota, in the heart of
one of the states major lake areas, has transformed into much more of an urban area primarily because of the very large percentage of
its visitors owning seasonal homes. The businesses that have developed in the area cater to
seasonal home owners and are in fact the same
brand name establishments that service home
owners in the urban cities from which the seasonal home owners originate.
New attempts to create consumption centres
and support rural tourism development have
been assisted by the growth of festival and
events. Getz (2000), citing Janiskee (1994),
claims that the number of events has been
growing at an annual rate of approximately
4.6% since 1931. Almost 40% of that growth,
however, was recorded in the 1980s alone.
There is concern expressed about the sustainability of this growth (Walle, 1994; from Getz,
2000). What is clear is that some communities
are heavily dependent on the brand they have
created through their annual event. Gilroy,
California claims to be the worlds garlic
capital and almost all of its marketing ties into
developing this brand image. On a smaller
scale Seymour, Wisconsin is the proud home of
Burger Fest with a world record hamburger
grilled outside in 2001 and claims to be where
the first hamburger sandwich was first offered
for sale.
There are number of market trends that
indicate positive signs for rural tourism
development:
(1) growing interest in heritage, tradition,
authenticity and rural life;
(2) taking multiple holidays per year with a
desire to take a second short break in a
rural area;
(3) increasing health consciousness giving a
positive appeal to rural lifestyles and
values such as fresh air, activity opportunities and stress-free situations;
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W. C. Gartner
(4) market interest in high performance
outdoor equipment from clothing to all
terrain bikes and high-tech climbing
equipment;
(5) search for solitude and relaxation in a quiet
natural place;
(6) an ageing but active population retiring
earlier but living and travelling far into old
age (Long and Lane, 2000)
As a result of these trends there have been
numerous attempts to create additional
tourism products, including a heavy emphasis
on heritage and culture, the development of
niche markets such as birding tours, golf and
more emphasis on agri-tourism. These are all
singular attribute-specific approaches and are
based on old models for how rural tourism
destinations have developed historically. The
next section will briefly discuss some attributespecific approaches with respect to consumer
interest.
ATTRIBUTE ORIENTATION
Most early rural tourism destinations developed to satisfy a singular market interest.
Fishing resorts in the upper Mid-west, downhill skiing in New England and the West; white
water rafting in both eastern and western
states, service centres for visitors to National
Parks and so on. Recently this attributespecific approach has been extended to include
heritage and cultural attractions and agritourism. Heritage and cultural development
received a large boost at the 1995 White House
conference on tourism where the message that
any community can develop heritage and
cultural tourism was delivered. Hollinshead
(1996) reported that heritage tourism was one
of the fastest growing segments of tourism.
It would appear that sometime in the 1990s
tourists started to discover heritage and
cultural attractions. Or did they? At least developers and marketing specialists began
to discover culture. Loverseed (1998) and
Zukowski (1994) (both from Zeppel, 2002)
report that in British Columbia in 1994 there
were 182 native tourism businesses with most
of that growth occurring since 1983. Richards
(2000) argues that it is not so much an increasing interest in cultural/heritage tourism that is
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Rural Tourism in the USA

responsible for the growth in this sector but
rather the constantly expanding definition of
cultural. Richards goes on to say that the market
for culture/heritage products may actually be
saturated. This would make future rural
tourism development efforts focused on cultural/heritage attributes a risky proposition.
Agri-tourism grew out of a need to redirect
non-government money to farmers who were
struggling to deal with the forces of a global
economy. There were also examples operating
for years, primarily through Europe, that
seemed to indicate agri-tourism had potential
for growth (Long and Lane, 2000).
As we look to the future of rural tourism in
North America the question is asked whether
a singular attribute-specific approach is still
the right path to follow. Although tourism is all
about experiences, destinations and their marketing efforts have first and foremost tried to
sell product attributes (i.e. fishing, national
parks, white water rafting, etc.), the assumption being that attributes are what pulls
someone into an area with the experiences to
be gained from visiting unique to the individual. Researchers from the natural resource
management agencies were some of the first to
look at experiences gained from engaging in
different types of recreation. They generally
found that even within a single product (e.g.
hiking) numerous experiences were available.
Further they were able to categorise users of
these products by the types of experiences
sought. Initial efforts in this area were led by
Driver and Toucher (1970), Driver and Brown
(1975), Potter et al. (1973) and Hendee (1974).
Tourism-specific research, conversely, did
not adopt an experience-based approach until
much later. The first destination image studies
(Hunt, 1971; Mayo, 1973) asked survey respondents to provide their perception of a destinations activities and/or attractions. For many
years after this initial work much image work
followed the same line of reasoning, which
was to see how people perceive the physical
features of what a destination had, or could,
offer. A notable exception to the attributespecific approach to assessing and marketing
destinations came from Plog (1974). His work
on allocentrics/psychocentris, now termed
venturers/dependables (Plog, 2002), argues
that people can be grouped by how they
Copyright 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

159
choose to travel and therefore the general types
of experiences they seek from the overall travel
experience. Still, Plogs approach is not truly
benefit-based as the characteristics used to
define market segments are based on productspecific consumption patterns. In the area of
image, experience-based research began to
appear in 1991 when Echtner and Richie
suggested images could be aligned on three
continuums providing more of a holistic
assessment of an individuals perceptions.
Their work has spawned further efforts (Suh
and Gartner, in press; Chandler and Costello,
2002) that have moved away from attributespecific image assessments to ones that encompass a more experiential view of what tourists
seek from their holidays. There is little
evidence, however, based on a convenience
assessment of rural marketing literature, that
any major shifts have been made in how rural
areas present themselves to potential customers. It is still very much an attribute-specific approach, with experiences to be gained
implied from how the advertisment copy reads
or looks. Dann (1996) has reviewed how advertisment copy language conveys certain messages about the benefits to be gained from
visiting a particular destination. Still, there is
no body of evidence that suggests benefits portrayed in advertising copy are based on benefits sought by targeted, potential tourists.
To emphasise the point that rural tourism
development tied to experiential products supported by marketing that emphasises experiences over specific physical attributes deserves
increased attention, two recently completed
studies will be referenced. Only the sections
that deal with cultural/heritage and agritourism, the two newest specific attributes
receiving increased development and marketing attention, are highlighted.
The first study dealt with the attributes and
amenities sought by highway users in the state
of Minnesota (Gartner et al., 2002). The second
report was a visitor profile study of tourists in
five Minnesota communities (Gartner et al.,
2001). For the sake of brevity the research
design will not be fully detailed in this article.
Instead the reader is referred to the website of
the University of Minnesota, Tourism Center
(www.tourism.umn.edu/research) for a complete description of methods used and results.
Int. J. Tourism Res. 6, 151164 (2004)

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One of the questions highway users of 11 different road segments in the state of Minnesota
were asked was: Below is a list of experiences
you may have had while traveling today on
this road segment. Please indicate how important this experience was to you in traveling this
road segment today. Then indicate how much
you were able to attain that experience on this
road segment. The list of experiences related
to culture included: experience the local
culture; experience local cultural events; learn
about the cultural history of the area. Respondents were asked to answer using a sevenpoint scale from Very Unimportant (1) to Very
Important (7). For attainment of the experience
the respondent was offered a four-point scale
ranging from Did not attain (1) to Totally
attained (4). The list of experiences also
included one related to agri-tourism, which
was: experience local agricultural practices.
The roads chosen for analysis were located
throughout the state and included designated
scenic highways, interstate highways and
county maintained roads. The highways
wound through forested land, agriculture
areas, small towns and the fringes of the metro
area. Road segments studied were kept relatively short (1560 miles) in order to limit the
number of different landscapes the respondent
travelled through, thereby reducing undesirable data noise.
Almost without exception, the highway
users that indicated they were interested in
cultural experiences or agricultural practices
recorded the lowest levels of experience
seekers in the study. Even more disturbing is
those who said they selected the road to gain
cultural experiences or experience local agricultural practices recorded very low scores on
the attainment scale. Even cultural experience
seekers on road segments that included significant cultural attractions, such as a state park
with Indian burial mounds, indicated they
were unable to attain their desired cultural
experiences. This finding supports Richards
(2000) contention that the definition of culture
has become so diluted over the years that it is
almost impossible to pin down. For the few
travellers interested in experiencing local
cultural practices, the finding that they
were unable to attain it was even more interesting as the study took place during the
Copyright 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

W. C. Gartner
summer months when agricultural activity
was high.
Other findings were more revealing with
respect to attribute-specific approaches to rural
tourism development. When factor analysis
was conducted to reveal the different types of
user groups found along the highways a
segment, named Learners and Doers, was
revealed. This segments size ranged from a
low of 11% to a high of 31% of the users found
along a particular highway. Members of this
segment were interested in learning new
things from driving through rural areas and
visiting small towns. They were also more
likely than any of the other identified segments
to stop spontaneously and do things while
travelling, such as bird watching or hiking.
A study (Gartner et al., 2001) of visitors to
rural destinations in the State of Minnesota was
even more revealing. Again using factor analysis, it was shown that certain visitors tended to
cluster into specific activity segments. Activities such as fishing, golfing, and boating tended
to form separate segments, whereas activities
such as hiking, visiting small towns, bird
watching, driving for pleasure and enjoying
autumn colours tended to cluster together.
When activity usage is analysed it appears that
those that are expensive to access and time consuming form their own segments. This would
help explain the success of attribute-specific
approaches to rural tourism development.
Fishing and golf resorts are common in the
upper Midwest of the USA and were some of
the early forms of resort development. On the
other hand, user segments that are undifferentiated by product but tied together by the ease
of which one can access or exit the activity without significant money or time costs have been
generally ignored in rural tourism development.
The attribute-specific approach to rural
tourism development still dominates today as
evidenced by a recent newsletter from the
Travel Industry Association of America that
announces an educational seminar dedicated
to providing a Blueprint for Heritage Tourism
Development (TIA, 2003). Although attributespecific development approaches may be used
as a base for tourism development they remain
examples of the historical pattern of rural
tourism development in North America. Some
destinations have been able to capitalise on
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Rural Tourism in the USA

their heritage as a base for development while
using an attribute-specific approach to bring in
tourists. For example, Deadwood, South
Dakota has preserved its historic downtown
by allowing casinos to operate within its jurisdiction. The proceeds from gaming support
historic preservation activities. In this case
there were few options to gaming as tourist
visitation without gaming was not enough to
maintain, enhance or even preserve the historic character of the town (Long et al. 1994).
The use of heritage to promote and market
destinations continues the attribute-specific
approach to development that has been the
basis for rural tourism development in North
America. Kerstetter et al. (2001) argue that even
though many sources claim Americans are
more interested in travelling to heritage sites,
little is known about the people who do visit
these sites. MacKay et al. (2002) looked at niche
markets tied to cultural activities at USA and
Canadian destinations. Niche markets, they
argued, are not yet viewed as large or important enough to qualify as market segments.
What they found with respect to activity patterns was surprisingly similar to the results
reported above for the State of Minnesota. Easy
entry, easy access types of activities, what the
authors call passive forms of activity, tended to
cluster together for select groups of travellers.
Cultural activities were frequently grouped
with other types of passive activities such as
bird watching and hiking. Their findings
suggest attribute-specific approaches to development do not necessarily work for all travellers. They also argue that attribute-specific
approaches to tourism development, what
MacKay et al. (2002) refer to as special interest
tourism, creates arbitrary distinctions between
groups where no conceptual or practical differences between users exist. It may make it
easy for marketers to think in terms of specific
attributes to attract user segments, but tourists
themselves may not be thinking this way.
Further support for these findings is also
found in Taylor et al. (1993).
CONCLUSION
Rural tourism development in North America
is a story of opportunity brought about by
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161
world events, with the most significant of
those being World War II. Shortly after World
War II, prosperity in the USA and Canada,
coupled with excess supply of new, to recreation, equipment led to significant growth in
communities catering primarily to tourists.
This was the boom time for rural areas, as agriculture was still the dominant rural economic
engine with small manufacturing beginning to
discover rural areas as places to locate. Adding
tourism to the mix only enhanced the economic outlook for rural areas.
That all began to change in the late 1960s and
1970s as the seeds of globalisation began to
sprout, technological advances reduced the
need for agricultural labour, small manufacturers began to consider offshore sites and
rural populations picked up and moved to
urban areas. It was during the 1970s and 1980s
that much of rural USA and Canada looked to
tourism for relief from the economic malaise
in which it found itself. Escalating levels of
wealth increased the supply of tourists and
rural areas began to experience success with
tourism development using, for the most part,
a supply side or attribute-specific approach to
development. However, increased levels of
wealth also brought new pressures on land
prices, initiating another wave of transformation. Many rural destinations became much
more urban in character and, by definition, in
reality as populations increased to handle all
the new consumers. Land prices in natural
resource amenity rich areas forced small
operators to sell or become large operators.
Universities began to awaken to the size and
economic importance of tourism and devoted
more resources to helping rural residents
develop the skills needed to develop their own
brand of tourism.
Worldwide, demand for products such as
found in a rural setting are said to be on the
increase. Using attribute-specific arguments it
is not uncommon to read in trade magazines
that cultural, nature and adventure based
tourism demand is expected to increase by a
rate of 1030% in the next five years. However,
when one reviews the definitions for what constitutes, for example, a culturally based trip it
is not clear how much of the increase is due to
demand or simply confusion over what comprises culture (Richards, 2000). Home stays
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162
and visits to museums, essentially different
products, are both included in the current
popular definition of cultural tourism.
The twenty-first century continues the tradition of an attribute specific approach to rural
tourism development even though there are
signs of market saturation for numerous
tourism products. Demand-side research generally has been ignored in the practice of developing tourism products unless demand can be
tied to specific attributes.
There are trends that indicate the demand
for rural based tourism will continue to
increase. There are also trends that suggest
tourism growth will remain sluggish even
though economic pressure is forcing more
rural destinations to consider further tourism
development thereby increasing the supply of
rural tourism products and competition for
available tourists. As was suggested in the last
section of this article, new approaches to
product development and marketing of rural
tourism products should be considered. There
is a substantial research base that addresses
experiential outcomes from recreation and
recently from tourism. Yet there is no widespread adoption of this research into the marketing approaches used by rural destination
promoters.
Rural tourism development in North
America is a story of domestic tourism and
transformation of the physical plant brought
on by exogenous forces through the
years. International visitors, although welcomed, will have very little impact on how
rural tourism in the USA and to a lesser
extent, Canada, develops. It is the interests of
people who drive to the destination, and primarily live within a days drive, that matter
most. Through the years rural tourism products have been developed with the primary
interests of those visitors in mind. Although
this approach has worked well for over 100
years there are some signs that a new paradigm is in order. As Aldous Huxley penned in
Along the Road (1925) We read and travel
not to broaden our minds but that we may
pleasantly forget they exist. How to make this
happen is the challenge facing not only those
working to bring tourists into a rural area but
also those seeking the true rural tourism
experience.
Copyright 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

W. C. Gartner
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