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Why is this theme important to small towns? |
Of the various SusSET themes explored, this is the one theme that each partner strongly felt would be increasingly relevant to small towns and their future development. Due to their scale, small towns have an opportunity to differentiate and promote themselves more effectively and explore their unique qualities. The benefits of tourism were found to extend beyond the obvious areas of job creation and economic growth into other areas including better quality services for residents, public facilities and arts and culture, including for young people. Some of the main findings were:
- Tourism development can help to offset the decline of traditional local industries and job losses and to create sustainable local employment in place of unemployment or daily travel to a nearby city or larger town.
- Adds economic growth to the local economy by attracting the spending power of tourists.
- Provides benefits to residents with better than average transport services and links, a better shopping experience and/or better public and health services.
- These gains may even extend into better provision of arts and cultural activities, civic pride and community engagement with additional benefits in unrelated fields like education. (The unique history of each town and its traditions was a strong factor here as seen in the Case Studies).
- Promotes an image of an attractive location to live and work in, which can attract inward investment and new business opportunities.
- Greater opportunity to retain young people in the town and to provide them with better facilities.
An important finding was the positive impact tourism has in terms of the conserving and protecting the natural and built environment. All of the participants had unique aspects that fell in to this category and, in some cases, underpinned major elements of their project work. This ranged from better presentation of the towns (example – floral displays, light festivals, brand development), better than average waste and cleaning provision, greater involvement by local people and businesses in civic pride; and to establishing longer term plans for major enhancement projects and town centre regeneration. It was found, also, that these benefits extended to the surrounding rural areas.
Tourism, however, can have a negative impact as well. Some towns experience seasonal activity and a shortage of accommodation that may limit the types of tourism appropriate or mean higher than normal prices. Other towns may experience congestion due to the numbers of visitors and this may place pressure on local services or cause friction with residents. A particular problem may be the growth of second homes, which can be unoccupied for much of the year. This can have the added effect of denying local people the opportunity for home ownership.
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