ABSTRACT
For over two decades now, tourism continues to be advocated as one industry that socio-economically at-risk communities could pursue to help improve their community health. Like any industry, when successfully developed, tourism earns real income, creates jobs, produces tax revenues, stimulates infrastructural improvement and beautification projects, and encourages community resource conservation and preservation. This, in turn, improves the community’s attractiveness for in-migration of businesses and people, thereby strengthening the community tax base and enhancing the quality of life. More enticingly, tourism has been described as a ‘smokeless industry’ that almost all communities could viably develop: a low-tech industry that does not require high capital investment or highly skilled workers; and almost every community possesses some type of tourist attraction, namely, natural, ethnocultural and/or historical. For communities that are really ill-endowed, artificial attractions could be created and special events could be staged (Inskeep 1991; Blank 1989; Gunn 1988; McNulty, Jacobson and Penne 1985).
