“Tourism in Troubling Times”

Dan Shilling

July 2010

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness.” – Mark Twain

As if the travel and tourism community needed a reminder, the recent political controversy in Arizona and the natural catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico hammer home the point that tourism is not a boutique industry isolated from the rest of society – a mere purveyor of trinkets and experiences. Few sectors will suffer as much from Arizona’s immigration law and BP’s oil gusher as the tourism economies in the affected states.

        The hospitality industry’s success is intimately linked to the health of other local assets – social and natural as well as commercial. However, for too long tourism development in many places has been guided by chambers of commerce, departments of economic development, and other growth machines that pay, at best, lip service to their area’s authentic heritage. If your town’s main attraction is its historic downtown, why isn’t tourism overseen by a preservation society, rather than organizations whose chief concern is attracting car dealers, big-box marts, and fast-food franchises?

        What’s clear is that few industries benefit more than tourism from a distinctive, plentiful, attractive environment. Conversely, few economic sectors are disadvantaged more by a dreary, polluted setting. The same holds for social ecologies, where strength also lies in variety, and for tourism the message is equally plain: Communities that embrace their multicultural heritage attract more high-value visitors than places perceived as intolerant.

        With those economic certainties staring them in the face, responsible tourism industry leaders should be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with land trusts, cultural centers, and human rights groups, not only rental car agencies, airlines, and resorts.             

        The political assault on Arizona’s heritage, not to mention the horrifying loss of wilderness and wildlife in Louisiana and neighboring states, will dramatically affect tourism’s bottom line, probably more than any other commercial cluster. For the most part, though, the travel sector has done little to avoid this train wreck.

        The story in Arizona suggests industry players brought it upon themselves.

Lesson I: Mecham

In 1986, a car dealer from Glendale, Arizona, who had run for governor so many times he became a local joke, won a three-way race for his state’s highest office. An ultra-conservative Mormon who for years had cranked out a newspaper that reflected his political and religious fundamentalism, Evan Mecham would serve only fifteen months as governor, before being impeached for obstruction of justice and misuse of funds.

        Prior to his removal from office, however, still in the afterglow of his slim victory, Mecham’s first act as governor was to rescind the state’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday, which had been established by his predecessor, Bruce Babbitt.

        The political and economic consequences of Mecham’s decision are familiar to many tourism officials. The NFL moved Arizona’s first Super Bowl to California; dozens of conventions, including the NBA, canceled; and in protest many tourists took their wallets elsewhere. Travel industry leaders, aware that the state’s racist image was picking their pockets clean, were among the first to join the public effort that eventually returned the MLK Holiday to Arizona.

        Where is that leadership today?

        In the mid-nineteenth century, when a bankrupt publisher of temperance literature named Cook started a travel business, sure, he needed to make a buck. But the architect of the now-famous Thomas Cook Tours also saw travel as a moral agent, as a congealing force for tolerance. Cook believed tourism must be about more than coin. Today, the volunteers building homes in New Orleans or planting trees in national parks on their vacation remind us of the ennobling power of tourism. In Arizona, what industry is better suited to bringing together different cultures, combating the hysteria, and fostering understanding?

Lesson II: Brewer

When Governor Jan Brewer signed SB 1070, the “papers please” legislation, in May 2010, she set off a fire storm of protests locally and nationally, resulting in a boycott that even Arizona Congressman Raul Gríjalva endorsed. More than a few organizations that had scheduled conferences in Phoenix, Scottsdale, and other tourism-dependent towns took their conventioneers elsewhere; a handful of major cities ceased doing business with Arizona municipalities and companies; families changed their vacation plans and encouraged others to do so on progressive websites; touring musical acts bypassed the Grand Canyon State; and Major League Baseball entertained the idea of moving its 2011 All-Star game out of Phoenix. If MLB remains in the desert, some popular players have already said they’ll stay home.

        Given that tourism is a huge economic engine in Arizona, a $17-billion jolt, the effects have been disastrous: at least $90 million has vanished in Phoenix alone, and likely hundreds of millions will go missing statewide, perhaps billions at some point. The Arizona Tourism Alliance estimates 30,000 industry workers have lost their jobs. Piling worst on worse, this economic death spiral is taking place in a state that was already neck-deep in debt, forcing legislators to shut down, among other services, museums and state parks, the attractions that tell the Southwest story sought by cultural and ecotourists. A double whammy.

        Unlike the MLK experience, however, Arizona’s tourism spokespersons have been absent from the discussion about overturning the law that will detrimentally affect the industry’s revenues more than any other. Instead, they focus on rebranding the state’s image through marketing, not changing policy through political action. When the upshot of SB 1070 started to make itself felt, industry leaders issued a press release saying they were “concerned,” but, hey, the immigration bill isn’t our fault so don’t punish us! The Arizona Tourism Alliance, the advocacy arm whose role is to support pro-industry legislation and, one assumes, oppose measures that impede tourism, did not contest the immigration bill.

        That silence is indicative of the grip conservatives have on the hospitality sector. While many working in tourism do so because they take pride in their place and enjoy sharing it with others, which is the ethic that should guide the industry, leadership is often dominated by business-friendly forces who value tourism merely as another cog in their development schemes. Left unchecked, their growth-for-growth’s sake agenda can undermine local economies, destabilize social networks, and ruin built and natural environments – the so-called “triple bottom line.” Not coincidently, that three-legged stool also defines the ingredients of success for tourism economies: profit, people, place. Travel officials who do not embrace the newer forms of creative economics have clearly missed the boat; and economic development directors who do not see tourism’s potential to tap into restorative policies are standing alongside them on the shoreline.

        Unfortunately, many hospitality programs remain trapped in the pocket of development-happy politicians and local boosters, privileging only one bottom line. One consequence is that Arizona’s tourism voices are reluctant to oppose the state’s Republican governor, even though her public announcements about “invasions” from south of the border and decapitations in the desert don’t exactly make for a winning travel campaign. Brewer’s fear mongering may get her elected, but it sure hasn’t helped towns trying to fill motel rooms.

What Have We Learned?

It’s odd, then, that the assault on Arizona’s sense of place goes largely unchallenged by the industry. Gubernatorial appointments surely account for some of the silence, but what has also paved the way for the corporate control of tourism development is the public’s absence from the deliberations. We’ve taken our eyes off the ball, allowing an industry that “sells” our community to determine how our identity will be packaged. Sure, there are outstanding exceptions, but much tourism planning shuts out local voices – the people whose home is marketed to strangers, the people who usually know more about their place than motel managers, the people who are often the most affected by the industry’s decisions.

        Just as communities are battling the corrosive effects of industrial farming, multinational chains, and other homogenizing forces that devastate local businesses and natural environments, residents should demand that their tourism bureaus work to preserve and enhance the things they love about their place. In Arizona that means land and culture.    

        Look at most publications and websites promoting the state. Yes, there’s golf and shopping, but the state’s “brand” is its amazing natural and cultural landscapes: the Grand Canyon, White Mountains, and Sonoran Desert; Native American, Old West, and Hispanic legacies. It is majesty like nowhere else – why many live here, why many more visit. As historian Wallace Stegner once advised us, it’s time to create a society that reflects our scenery.

        Yet while tourism bureaus plaster these magnificent images on their brochures, when politics enters the ring industry leaders are reluctant to acknowledge, let alone celebrate, the state’s uniqueness and diversity. Wonderful and committed people work in the sector, to be sure, and Arizona’s annual tourism conference suggests some rank-and-file want to challenge the “papers please” legislation. However, real clout remains in the hands of the political and business elite, some who work for or otherwise support the elected officials responsible for SB 1070.

        Rather than oppose the bill and the people who made it law, the leadership’s newest strategy is to support politicians who have the industry’s back. Now, the most effective way to help tourism in Arizona would be to repeal SB 1070, but that’s not what they mean. In the hospitality universe, where marketing matters more than substance, officials say they will support politicians who parrot the public relations narrative that says Arizona really isn’t a Third World country: “Ya’ll come now, it’s safe!”

        To begin, the industry aims to take out the state’s most outspoken critic of the immigration law, Raul Gríjalva, because he backs the boycott. How loopy is that? If the congressman succeeded at undoing SB 1070, the benefit to travel operators would be far greater than a hundred welcoming testimonials from other smiling politicians. These hollow calculations, where PR trumps reality, remind me of the Arizona city whose mission statement for “sustainable tourism” said their efforts were intended to sustain the tourism industry (not the natural and cultural environment). Gulp.

        The travel industry here is right to be nervous, but rather than deflect blame, invent a better slogan, or cheer on the politicians who erected the “papers please” sign that greets visitors at the border, they should be at the forefront of a grassroots effort to explain to all Arizonans the consequences of this divisive, unnecessary, and even counter-productive bill. Someone should show moral leadership and imagination, as Thomas Cook did – for economic reasons, for the right reasons.

        While Arizona remains factionalized by a policy that dramatically affects tourism profits and social structures, the long-term impacts of BP’s blunder on the region’s overall economy, ecological integrity, and social dynamics will play out over years – even beyond the nation’s boundaries as the oil follows weather and currents. Both stories illustrate the damage that can result by not considering the triple bottom line in regional planning, and by allowing tourism development to be hijacked by forces not entirely friendly to local culture.

        I’m waiting to hear an industry spokesperson say tourism is not about “heads in beds,” but about creating healthier communities for people to visit – and live. Tourism should be a means to a greater good, not an economic end in itself. But as long as the tail wags the dog, the travel industry, which benefits from and can contribute to every state’s rich cultural heritage, will continue to build theme parks that conceal, rather than reveal, the authentic themes. That way lies the loss of place, and with it an industry that depends on it.

       Too bad, it’s often an exciting, creative, potentially place-enhancing business. Fun too. Let’s remember why we do this thing called tourism.  

Dan Shilling is the author of Civic Tourism: The Poetry & Politics of Place.

Contact: danshilling@cox.net

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