Renewing and re-invigorating settlements: A role for tourism?

In remote areas, settlements are usually established for specific purposes, such as: an administrative outpost; to support a specific transport technology; for service extractive natural resource industries such as mining, farming, fishing and forestry; or to provide a location for a military establishment. If the purpose for which a settlement was established changes, there is potential for decline to occur unless a replacement industry can be established. As the authors of Chapter 3 in this volume have conveyed, resource- ased settlements in particular are susceptible to boom and b bust cycles linked to overdependence on external markets (Schmallegger and Carson, 2010). Finding replacement industries is generally difficult, although in recent decades tourism has been flagged as an activity that has some potential to assist settlements that are in danger of decline. However, for a strategy based on tourism to succeed in the long term, the communities living in these settlements must be able to offer attractions capable of generating visitor interest, provide long-term employment options for the t community and contribute to long-term community economic stability. t This is not always possible. This chapter examines the potential for tourism to be developed as an alternative industry sector in remote settlements that are either facing decline or wish to find an alternative economic base.