Capitalizing on Trail Recreation: A How-To Guide

Although creating or expanding a trail system can deliver significant economic benefits by itself, communities can do more to capitalize on the economic potential of trails. Trails generate economic impacts by delivering additional spending to businesses. As businesses become more productive, new jobs and tax revenues follow. The additional spending may result from increased visitation or by changing the behavior of an existing pool of resident shoppers.

The trail system represents a vehicle for influencing how both residents and outsiders view a community. More importantly, the trail system can become a way to persuade recreational visitors to think about the community from a business perspective. Conversely, if business visitors already travel to your community, the trail system can be used to influence business visitors to consider returning for leisure purposes.

Clearly, organizing economic development programs around trail recreation is not an easy undertaking. If your community chooses to pursue such programs, many steps must be taken along the way. This section describes the five major steps that comprise the process. As with any other public process, it is extremely important to keep citizens involved and informed from the outset. For this reason, the best place to start is with the community at large.

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Step 1: Enlist Citizen Involvement

Any initiative intended to enact change in a community, from creating a trails system to revitalizing Main Street, must include some degree of citizen participation. Obtaining input from the public simply makes sense, regardless of whether local regulation requires it. Avoiding a system for letting local residents and other stakeholders express their concerns and contribute their ideas makes for a weaker approach and opens the process up to criticism that can derail the best laid plans.

The classic public hearing scenario-a gathering in the town hall or school auditorium-where the assembled hear presentations on the anticipated improvements and implementation approach, can be adapted to almost any situation. Including people with a variety of points of view, issues and desires should be a principal goal. Obtaining this level of participation means going beyond the standard hearing notice printed in the local paper. Contacting people through their social and service clubs, churches, sports leagues, children's schools and other non-traditional means will help attract participants.

Other communities ask that plan representatives be allowed to speak briefly at other meetings to gain input and solicit attendance for larger events. A special effort should be made to include potential plan opponents to ensure a valid process invulnerable to charges that these views were somehow ignored. In the course of trail planning, local property rights activists should be expected, and thus should be welcomed.

Citizen involvement also benefits from community participation in leading meetings. Training local residents to facilitate community sessions helps keep people engaged. Fairness in the process, perhaps by establishing rules of behavior and techniques for organizing the public conversation, is easiest to enforce neighbor-to-neighbor.

Once you have organized public meetings, the next issue is to formulate an agenda. In developing any economic development program, the starting point is to clearly define a direction. When assembling a marketing strategy based on a tourism-related entity like trail recreation, the starting point is to create a community identity.

By providing public services to users of the Katy Trail, the town of Augusta, Missouri has established itself as a trail-friendly community. This attractive historic building was refitted for public restrooms for trail users.

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Step 2: Build a Community Identity

Building and maintaining an identity as a tourist destination is an ongoing process. To promote tourism in your community, the first step is to conduct an honest and thorough process of identifying the benefits a visitor will derive from visiting. This assessment of community character and visitor experience should tap into insights provided by both residents and people from other places. Residents may know their hometowns inside out, but tourists often notice unusual or charming attributes that residents tend to take for granted.

Findings from this assessment will guide the process of creating marketing materials and messages, which in turn shape visitors' expectations of the experience in your community. Creating a reasonable level of expectation is important, as many destinations oversell themselves and send visitors home disappointed. Through the assessment process, a community-wide vision of a desirable future can be developed, as well as a sense of what steps are required to achieve it.

Once your community has established a clearer idea of its tourist identity, some initial investments must be made prior to mounting a marketing campaign, including:

• Printing basic collateral materials, such as a combination map and guidebook, brochures suitable for distribution at State and other visitor centers, and materials suitable for inclusion in cooperative advertising vehicles such as the state visitor guide. Sponsorships by businesses can reduce public costs.
• Opening a storefront visitor center.
• Establishing an 800 number, which may either ring locally or at a contract call center.
• Hiring staff and/or recruiting volunteers to implement publicity programs, organize special events and coordinate with area businesses and organizations concerned with tourism development.

Now you should be ready to take on a marketing and public relations campaign.

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Step 3: Develop a Marketing Plan

Increasing awareness about your community means you will need to develop, implement, evaluate, and refine a marketing and public relations plan. Key points to keep in mind are listed below.

• Marketing programs should reflect consumer needs and convey the benefits of your community to visitors. Unless tourists' needs are satisfied, they will not visit again and may advise others not to visit. What distinguishes your town from other places? What aspects of your trail system differentiate it from the alternatives? What else is there to see and do that persuades people to stay overnight?
• Marketing is more than advertising and printing brochures. It includes all communication efforts such as personal outreach, assistance, and public relations (e.g., visitor information provision, signage, hospitality, etc.) . For this reason, marketing must involve people who interact with visitors before, during and after they spend time in your community. Service employees like cashiers and hotel housekeepers may need hospitality training to understand their important role in marketing the community.
• Marketing claims must be honest, accurate and consistent with your community's ability to deliver. Travelers often decide to "buy" tourism experiences sight-unseen, so the marketing campaign has to provide clues about what to expect. Today's tourist is generally well-informed and is often suspicious of overblown advertising claims.
• Publicity is more effective than placing paid advertisements because an independent third party vouches for the experience your community and trail system offers. Organizing events and festivals, especially when a charity benefits, helps attract publicity. Travel writers specializing in nontraditional tourist experiences are always on the lookout for interesting "undiscovered" destinations to profile for their readers. Communities can also work with the Iowa Division of Tourism to be included on familiarization (or "fam") trips that they organize for industry insiders.
• If you do choose to pay for advertising, know what you hope to achieve. If you concentrate on niche markets you can reach better prospects in a cost-efficient manner. By contrast, mass marketing is expensive, but increases awareness over time. Resist the temptation to pursue the best available target markets until your town is ready to host knowledgeable visitors and not just meet, but exceed their expectations. Web sites or newsgroups aimed at trail users and newsletters distributed by clubs or equipment sellers are inexpensive and efficient means of reaching niche markets. Avoid alienating readers with a "hard-sell" approach.

The easiest approach is simply to make sure that existing brochures and other marketing communications feature the trail experience. Many towns work together to promote a trail system: if there's more to see and do along the way, a trail becomes more attractive as a destination. Others encourage the state's Division of Tourism to highlight trail experiences. Also, other attractions in your region will benefit from promoting the trail system as part of a whole array of things to see and do that entices visitors to come and stay.

Existing tourism promotion mechanisms, particularly at the state and regional levels, represent important resources to communities seeking to expand visitation. Too many smaller communities duplicate services available from tourism promotion counterparts at regional or state levels, often because local businesses insist on separate advertising and promotion campaigns. The most cost-effective advertising, especially for smaller communities, usually entails "piggybacking" onto existing efforts like the statewide visitor guide or joint advertising opportunities. These mechanisms can also issue press releases to promote your community's trail activities.

State and regional tourism offices serve the function of maintaining relationships with tour developers and group tour operators. They also create itineraries for "fam" tours designed for travel writers and others influential within the industry. It is much more efficient to work with local hotels, attractions, restaurants, museums and others catering to tourists to create a compelling reason for the state to include your community on fam tours. Otherwise your community would need to develop contacts from scratch.

A final facet of marketing could be creating new special events or expanding existing events, as they provide a great reason to mount a publicity blitz. However, festivals, competitive events and other community-wide activities require an immense amount of work to organize. Athletic events can incorporate the trail system, with activities ranging from extremely serious professional races to non-competitive events geared towards benefiting charities.

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Step 4: Choose an Approach to Economic Development

As was discussed in the Guiding Principles section, each community will have different needs and preferences for economic development programs. You can see from the case studies profiled throughout this handbook that towns and businesses can and have used trail recreation to promote economic development in a variety of ways. The three broad categories of these programs are community development, tourism development, and downtown revitalization.

Community Development Approaches

Community development includes neighborhood revitalization and business attraction efforts. The contributions of trails to quality of life and sense of place represent an important economic development asset. Trails:

• help current residents and business-owners feel connected to the community;
• enable prospective employers and employees to envision themselves enjoying "the good life" in town; and
• convey a sense that the public sector-whether local government, service organizations or partnerships-cares about providing a quality amenity and conserving natural and scenic experiences.

Trails can be used to address all three facets of typical economic development strategies: expansion, retention and attraction of businesses. Trails are particularly useful because they provide a free or low-cost recreational amenity while creating many opportunities to expose the advantages your community offers as a business location to people. Furthermore, trails reinforce your community's desirability as a place to live and work to current residents and employees.

While some trail users will absorb these messages without overt prompting, communities can take steps to speed the desired results. Techniques range from subliminal to direct, but must center on making quality of life apparent to existing trail users and on using the trail system to attract new, economically desirable users. As an example, community event bulletin boards can be installed at trailheads where people can post notices about church suppers, lost dogs, day care providers, etc. This provides a service for residents while sending a message to visitors that the town is friendly and active.

At the more aggressive end of the spectrum, communities can use the trail system as the centerpiece of a package geared toward the corporate events and outings market. These packages might entail cooperative partnerships with local restaurants (e.g., to cater a picnic) or hotels to extend lengths of stay and increase the associated economic impact.

This scene from downtown Boonville, Missouri captures both its frontier town heritage and its present day role of a tourist destination along the Katy Trail.

Existing corporations can become partners in community programs. Helping companies root themselves in the community lessens the likelihood of eventual relocation, as connected companies tend to expand in place rather than move to greener pastures. Securing the involvement of corporations may entail offering incentives, like promoting trail-based fitness programs for employees in exchange for health insurance savings. Incentive programs may also be designed to encourage employees to shop within the community. Particularly in larger cities, encouraging shopping at work instead of where they live can translate into significant business volume.

Another source of potential economic development linked to trails concerns "free agents" who operate small businesses, often from home. These people view communities principally as residents rather than as business owners. Their enterprises reflect lifestyle decisions as much as business decisions, and these lifestyle decisions can be strongly influenced by trails. Some of these businesses will grow into significant employers, outgrowing the home office and needing to rent commercial space. Others will remain small enterprises that still generate economic activity for the community. Making communities attractive to free agents means ensuring that zoning and other land use regulations are reasonable concerning home-based businesses, and that information regarding sources of assistance to small businesses is easily obtainable.

Tourism Development Approaches

The most reliable source of tourism development is to tap into existing markets in order to encourage longer stays and repeat visits. This strategy means educating business visitors about local leisure and recreation opportunities, and pitching business opportunities to leisure visitors. Ensuring that current visitors have access to information about a community's charms as a business location and vice versa is relatively simple. Overkill-three ring binders crammed with demographic and labor force data on every hotel room nightstand should be avoided, as it smacks of desperation and alienates some visitors. Instead:

• link existing web sites devoted to visitor information and economic development;
• stock local visitor centers with information about economic development programs and opportunities; and
• purchase ads in visitor brochures on behalf of the economic development agency.

Downtown Revitalization Approaches

Although trails can help attract visitors to a community either temporarily (as tourists) or permanently (as residents or business owners), the quality and character of the central business district (CBD) truly distinguishes a community. An attractive downtown with an array of merchants offering an enticing variety of goods and services makes the community more attractive as a destination. In other words, the better the downtown, the more money spent by visitors and residents. Part of capitalizing on the trail system entails reinvesting in the CBD, in keeping with the community's market-based trail development decisions discussed on page 5. While visitor markets alone may fail to generate enough business volume to support many merchants, when combined with resident spending, they often make the difference between profitability and failure.

Trail users represent a new market niche for existing businesses and entrepreneurs to consider. Communities that provide access to technical assistance can help merchants determine how best to take advantage of new markets while enhancing the core business. Ways in which merchants can achieve this include changing merchandise selection, display and window design, and marketing. For example, a deli might create a snack pack for hikers that includes a Power Bar and bottled water along with more traditional sandwich fare. A shoe store might display snowshoes in the front window. Businesses serving a broader clientele (i.e., a bike shop) might find locations near the trail to be especially attractive.

Downtowns often feature large and under-utilized spaces, perhaps former department stores or hotels. Downtown revitalization efforts can include grouping small tenants together in these areas. This model, akin to establishing a retail incubator or creating a flea market or multi-tenant antiques "mall," assumes that one entity takes management responsibility for shared services such as utilities and cleaning. In the flea market version, each enterprise handles its own transactions, while in the antiques mall approach, a central checkout counter serves all tenants. While some of these enterprises will remain small, others may outgrow the shared space and take over nearby storefronts.

Main Street-style programs can also go a long way towards creating a vibrant, attractive downtown. Small seed funds can be leveraged to develop façade programs and other property improvements. Business associations or the public sector often fund improvements such as historic lampposts, banners and a uniform sign style. Adjusting parking and other regulations may be necessary to ensure easy availability for casual shoppers, for example, enforcing a two-hour time limit to motivate employees to park off Main Street.

Click Here for More Info: "Economic Impacts of Trails and Greenways"

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Step 5: Organize for Implementation

Implementing a trail-based economic development plan requires ensuring that the organizational, technical and financial resources are in place to do the job. Each entity in the process has to help define its most suitable role and understand its place in the bigger picture.

Users of motorized trails are excellent sources of revenue and economic impact. Motorized users like snowmobilers and ATV riders are willing to travel greater distances and to spend more money than are non-motorized trail users. In addition, motorized trails are frequently constructed and maintained with funding from user fees, thus easing the burden on public agencies to raise money for trails.

The following points list the various elements required for implementation:

• creating partnerships between public, quasi-public and private sector entities;
• identifying logical roles and responsibilities-state agencies, local government units, private sector entities, and concerned non-profits; and
• determining the structure of the primary implementing entity-does implementing the plan require a new organization or does it fall within the mission and capabilities of an existing organization(s)?

Regarding the final point, it is rare that a single entity implements such a plan alone. More commonly, a coalition of existing entities (i.e., Chamber of Commerce, tourism promotion organization, downtown revitalization group) will band together to implement the plan. In such coalitions, an internal decision-making process must be clearly defined at the outset in order to avoid later conflicts.

Coalitions also need to establish how the new group will interact with other interests. Who will speak for it when the local newspaper reporter calls? How will it respond to the concerns of elected officials, particularly when they are inconsistent with the plan? Finally, how can coalition members assure their respective memberships that other projects won't receive short shrift? Anticipating these issues and brainstorming answers will prevent problems in the future.

The final step in the organization process is to identify suitable funding mechanisms. This step will vary from community to community, based upon individual situations. A few suggestions for funding are:

1. public appropriations, perhaps directly from sales tax revenue;
2. private donations;
3. corporate sponsorships of trails;
4. membership programs; and
5. user fees on trails or other earned revenues.