10.1177/0047287504265501
AUGUST
JOURNAL
2004
OF TRAVEL RESEARCH
Pressured by the decline of extractive industries and agriculture, many small towns are trying to acquire a share of
the tourism industry. While some communities decide to develop tourism from within their towns, often rural places turn
to large-scale privately owned tourism enterprises to act as
engines of economic development. While many studies have
examined how tourism can have negative social impacts in
rural communities, few studies detail how rural communities attitudes toward tourism can suffer when locals feel
alienated from planning/development decisions. In this
study, the authors examined data from participant observation and semistructured interviews in Williams, Arizona, to
determine whether changes in community attitudes toward
tourism followed patterns suggested by the established theoretical models of social carrying capacity and community
adaptation to a social disruption. We found that Williams is a
case where the fast pace of tourism development causes
community attitudes toward tourism to decline over time.
Keywords: rural tourism; community attitudes; sustainable development; Arizona; Grand
Canyon
Tourism is considered an important tool for economic
development in rural America, and many small towns are
trying to acquire a share of this growing industry (Galston
and Baehler 1995). Rural areas look to tourism as a means of
community development and economic diversification.
While some community leaders in small towns may often
focus on the positive aspects of tourism development, many
authors stress that both positive and negative consequences
are involved with increased tourism activity and dependence
(Allen et al. 1993; Lankford 1994; Long and Nuckolls 1992;
Long, Perdue, and Allen 1990; Matsuoka 1991; Rothman
1998).
Many approaches can be taken by small towns to develop
their tourist industries. Frequently, towns seek to increase
visitation by developing existing heritage resources. This is
exemplified by the many towns that have taken advantage of
the National Main Street Program to restore historic buildings in aging downtowns (Francaviglia 1996; Skelcher
1991). The impetus for this kind of tourism development
often comes from within the community. Conversely, a town
may choose to develop tourism in partnership with an outside company. Ski resorts, theme parks, casinos, golf resorts,
and tourist railroads all fall into the category of corporateowned attractions located in and around rural towns. In this
article, we will examine the impact of this kind of tourism
development on rural towns. These corporate tourism
AUGUST 2004
AUGUST 2004
METHOD
First, we collected quantitative data from the town government on the economic impacts of the tourist resort. Then
an inventory was done to determine the numbers and locations of businesses that opened and closed from 1999 to
2000. We also examined all issues of the local newspaper,
Williams News, dating back to 1988the year prior to the
announcement of the Grand Canyon Railway. We also had
an opportunity to ride the train to the Grand Canyon to get an
understanding of the experience.
Another part of the study entailed participant observation. This method was used to record the movement of tourists in and around the depot to determine what the tourists
were doing and where they were going before they boarded
the train. Observations were done on a Monday, Wednesday,
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday during the summer (peak tourism season). Since the railway station and its parking lot lay
opposite a group of railroad tracks from downtown, we
observed how many pedestrians crossed the tracks in the
hour and a half prior to the trains departure from Williams
(8:00 to 9:30 a.m.) and the hour following its return (5:30 to
6:30 p.m.). This was compared against the total numbers of
passengers on the train that day. The ticket count was
obtained from the company for each day of observation.
On a different Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday,
and Sunday, we counted the number of people at specific
locations at the station every 15 minutes during the hour and
a half prior to the departure of the train (8:00 to 9:30 a.m.).
Observations were made at different locations around the
station: the ticket windows, the gift shop, the Wild West
Show, the museum, the restaurant, the front of the depot, the
platform, and the front of the train. To control for variations
in the total number of people at the station each day, the
count of people at the specific locations was divided by the
total ticket count for the day. The object of this piece of the
research project was to map the flow of tourists around the
station through time.
We also performed semistructured interviews to gauge
community attitudes toward the tourism resort as well as to
ascertain what the community has done to try to take more
advantage of the tourism development in Williams. Respondents were selected based on their availability to contribute
to the questions posed by this study. We strove to find what
Creswell (1998, 119) referred to as information-rich cases
that manifest the phenomenon intensely. Sampling of this
kind is used in qualitative research to find cases most illustrative of the research topic. Long, in-depth interviews were
conducted with 22 people. The interviewees were Grand
Canyon Railway officials, merchants in downtown Williams, wage earners working in Williams (both for the railway and for other tourism-oriented businesses), and local
government officials. Interviewees were approached in person, and we either set up appointments for a later interview or
occasionally interviewed them on the spot if it was convenient for them. Some of the particularly informative interviewees were contacted again for follow-up interviews. All
the interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed. The
responses were then coded according to various research
interests (e.g., attitudes toward railway, cooperation
between city and merchants, etc.) and grouped into common themes. These various methods, used in concert, gave a
detailed description of the relationship between Williams
and the Grand Canyon Railway.
DISCUSSION
Downtown Merchants and the Railway
Most of the businesses in downtown Williams could be
labeled as tourist-oriented. While there are a few businesses that cater to local residents, the downtown is currently
dominated by small gift shops, tourist-oriented restaurants,
and motels. Most of the merchants reported that their businesses depended on tourist spending. The merchants noted
that much of their business comes in the evening from tourists traveling by car to the Grand Canyon or other destinations along Interstate 40. They are also eager to entice more
least an hour in the area looking at the pictures, looking at the exhibits, and reading about the history of the
Railway. There are three gift shops out there and all of
them are pretty expansive in what they have. Buy
yourself a little something to remember the trip by, a
video, or whatever. Go out and make the Wild West
show [also on the property]. That starts every morning at 9:00. Then I would, after the show, just make
sure that you get on the train in time.
This view conflicts with the desires of most merchants in the
downtown, who view the railway as an engine of economic
development for the town. This image was one that the railway itself had made considerable mention of when the company was first coming into the community. Some respondents reported that the company received many concessions
and deals from the town and that they have not helped the
community enough in return. One merchant said,
[The Railway] will continue to further divide the railroad operation visually, and accessibility wise [from
the downtown] to keep the hotel guests away from the
community. In every step theyve made, every conscious decision theyve made, is to block that off.
The key goal for operators of tourism-oriented businesses in
downtown Williams has been to get the tourists who are already in Williams into the downtown area. In particular, the
merchants were looking for ways to attract tourists from
across the tracks at the train depot. The strategies that have
been attempted fall into two general categories: attractive activities and landscape changes.
The attractive activities are few but are successful. One
business sends its employees in a 1950s-era car, with the
name of the diner prominently painted on the side, to greet
the train as it returns to Williams in the evening. A largerscale undertaking is the arrangement of a brass band leading
tourists to gunfights in the downtown streets of Williams
in the early evenings in the summer. A group of local high
school students dress in Civil Warera uniforms, greet the
trains arrival, and then in a pied piperlike manner march
into the downtown hoping to bring tourists with them to hear
them play and to watch the gunfights.
To perform the gunfights, the city closes Route 66 to traffic for about 30 minutes while a troupe of cowboy-dressed
performers shoot it out and tell jokes. It is truly a postmodern
experience. Tourists getting off a 1920s-themed train stand
in 21st-century Williams, on Route 66, in front of a blackand-white-checkered 1950s-themed diner, watching 1880sthemed cowboys perform a staged gunfight while a 1860s
Civil War band stands ready to play once it is over. It is also a
very successful event. Approximately 300 people come to
view the gunfight, and at its conclusion they can be seen diffusing into the nearby stores. While some of these tourists are
from the railway, the vast majority of them are automobile
tourists stopping in Williams for the evening before heading
to the Grand Canyon or destinations along Interstate 40. The
gunfight is arranged, and paid for, by the local chamber of
commerce in Williams.
The chamber of commerce may be successful at putting
on the gunfights, but the efforts of the chamber and other
downtown organizations in Williams are an excellent case
study of how towns can squander opportunities to take
AUGUST 2004
start right now and the plans will follow. That was
the way it went. We are in a big hurry. Weve got to
get the train started by September the 17, 1989 to hit
the deadline. We want to go. And we want to do it.
And we dont want anyone to stand in our way. This
is lots of people going through a public transit situation and they really dont want anyone to tell them
what the building codes are. And they did have a couple of lawsuits on things that they refused to do. I was
eased away from the situation, Keep an eye on them,
work with them, and all the rest of the stuff. But if it
gets down to push comes to shove, back off.
These comments shed light on two aspects of the relationship between the railway and the community. The first is
the perception by some in Williams that the railway behaves
in a rather gruff and inconsiderate way toward the community. The railway is seen as a big entity in town that can throw
its weight around to avoid rules and procedures that other
businesses must follow. Second, it shows how communication between the community and railway is less than ideal.
Changes in the companys plans are only discovered by
those in the town when they appear in the landscape or are far
into the planning stages.
One surprise action by the railway had a tremendous impact on the attitudes of people in Williams. In 1995, it moved
its headquarters and reservation offices to Flagstaff less than
a year after publicly denying it had any intentions to do so
(Williams News 1994). The city government was unable to
persuade the railway to stay. Many of the respondents I
spoke with in Williams pointed to that event as causing the
souring of community attitudes toward the railway. A former
government employee said,
On the outside you go, I dont blame those guys.
Why get tied up with a handful of small-minded little
townspeople? On the other hand, they are such a big
player in town they really ought to have more interest
in the future of the community and the benefits to both
the community and the Railway instead of standing
off and moving their operations to Flagstaff. Part of
that was to spite the community.
The other problem the town government has had is a lack
of cooperation with other groups in the community. When
we asked a government official what the city has done to try
to bring tourists into the downtown, he flatly responded that
was not the citys job and that I should ask the chamber of
commerce. Downtown merchants complained that the city
was not cooperative with initiatives put forth by the chamber
of commerce and Main Street:
Every time we [Main Street] would go to them [the
town government] for a project they would not go for
it. The state [of Arizona] said that they were going to
give us funding for better lighting downtown, . . . and
put planters along the sidewalks to put trees in and
stuff. Just to beautify it... Everything was approved
and we went to the city for matching funds and they
said No, because there was too much emphasis on
downtown. What emphasis? What emphasis? Were
dying! Businesses are going out of business every
single year.
CONCLUSIONS
The primary message that comes out of Williamss experience with tourism development is that when a large corporate tourism operation rapidly expands, it may create a tourism situation that is not socially sustainable. There is not only
a scale at which tourism development is not socially sustainable but also a rate of growth. Counter to the predictions
of both the tourism cycle model of social carrying capacity
and the model of community adaptation to a social disruption, attitudes toward tourism in Williams have become
more negative over time as the townspeoples efforts to adapt
to the Grand Canyon Railway have been thwarted by the
operations pace of expansion.
Specifically, people in Williams have been upset by their
inability to economically take advantage of the presence of
tourists. A main reason for this lies within the community
itself. While tourism studies have examined how communities are divided over the question of tourism (Allen et al.
1993; King, Pizam, and Milman 1993; Lankford 1994; Lew
1989; Matsuoka 1991; Pearce 1994), there has been little
research on how other divisions within the host community
can have serious effects on tourism development and community attitudes toward tourism. Apparently, these divisions
may have been overlooked by most tourism planners and
academics. They may not be between groups opposed to
tourism versus those in favor of it but between groups that
may all appear to support tourism. Other cultural schisms in
the town, such as old-timers versus newcomers or hard-todefine cliques of people, can have a substantial impact on
tourism development.
These divisions in the community may be hard to discover without the in-depth open-ended questioning used in
semi-structured interviews. One of the benefits of the qualitative methods used in this study, such as participant observation and in-depth interviews, is that they can uncover why
certain individuals in a community behave as they do toward
tourism development (Walle 1997). These feelings are
important because they are the basis for how people will act
and how successful a tourism project may be. In the case of
Williams, almost all of the quantitative data point to the conclusion that tourism development has been an unqualified
success. Tax revenue, the number of new businesses, visitation numbers, and property values have all greatly increased.
Despite these increases, almost everyone we spoke with in
Williams expressed a great deal of displeasure with the situation. While this could be a case of people not being appreciative of what is actually a good situation, most of the respondents genuinely believed that promises made in 1989 have
failed to materialize. It is important to document and understand the negative attitudes of people in the community,
whether observers view them as warranted or not, because
they can impact future tourism development initiatives in the
town and surrounding region.
10
AUGUST 2004
NOTE
1. Andereck and Vogt (2000, p. 31) showed that residents in
Williams were particularly negative about supporting further hotel
development. They noted this is because of the glut of hotel rooms
in the city. We found in our interviews that while some of this animosity toward the overbuilding of hotels was directed at newer hotels located near the interstate, there was particular anger by hotel
owners in the downtown area over the expansion of the railways
hotel.
REFERENCES
Allen, L., H. Hafer, P. Long, and R. Perdue (1993). Rural Residents Attitudes toward Recreation and Tourism Development. Journal of
Travel Research, 32: 27-33.
Andereck, K., and C. Vogt (2000). The Relationship between Residents attitudes toward Tourism and Tourism Development Options. Journal
of Travel Research, 39: 27-36.
Arizona Department of Commerce (1998). Community Profile: Williams.
Phoenix, AZ: Arizona Department of Commerce.
Britton, S. (1991). Tourism, Capital, and Place: Towards a Critical Geography of Tourism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 9:
451-78.
Butler, R. (1980). The Concept of a Tourist Area Cycle of Evolution: Implications for Management or Resources. Canadian Geographer, 24: 515.
City of Williams (1998). Free Visitors Guide. Williams, AZ: Author.
Creswell, J. (1998). Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing
among the Five Traditions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Dogan, H. (1989). Forms of Adjustment: Sociocultural Impacts of Tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 16: 216-36.
Doxey, G. (1976). A Causation Theory of Visitor-Resident Irritants. In
Impact of Tourism: Proceedings of the 6th Annual Conference of the
Travel Research Association. San Diego, CA: Travel Research
Association.
Francaviglia, R. (1996). Main Street Revisited: Time, Space and Image in
Small-Town America. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
Freitag, T. (1994). Enclave Tourism Development: For Whom the Benefits
Roll? Annals of Tourism Research, 21: 538-54.
Fuchs, J. (1953). A History of Williams, Arizona: 1876-1951. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Galston, W., and K. Baehler (1995). Rural Development in the United
States: Connecting Theory, Practice and Possibilities. Washington,
DC: Island Press.
Goss, J. (1993). The Magic of the Mall: An Analysis of Form, Function
and Meaning in the Contemporary Retail Built Environment. Annals
of the Association of American Geographers, 83: 18-47.
Gottdiener, M. (1997). The Theming of America: Dreams, Visions, and
Commercial Spaces. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Hernandez, S., J. Cohen, and H. Garcia (1996). Residents Attitudes towards an Instant Resort Enclave. Annals of Tourism Research, 23:
775-79.
Holden, A. (2000). Environment and Tourism. New York: Routledge.
King, B., A. Pizam, and A. Milman (1993). Social Impacts of Tourism:
Host Perceptions. Annals of Tourism Research, 20: 650-65.
Lankford, S. (1994). Attitudes and Perceptions toward Tourism and Rural
Regional Development. Journal of Travel Research, 33: 35-43.
Lew, A. (1989). Authenticity and Sense of Place in the Tourism Development Experience of Older Retail Districts. Journal of Travel Research, 28: 15-22.
Logan, J., and H. Molotch (1987). Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy
of Place. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Long, P., and B. Lane (2000). Rural Tourism Development. In Trends in
Outdoor Recreation, Leisure and Tourism, ed. W. C. Gartner and D.
W. Lime. Wallingford, UK: CAB International, pp. 299-308.
Long, P., and J. Nuckolls (1992). Rural Tourism Development: Balancing
Benefits and Costs. Western Wildlands, 18, Fall: 9-13.
Long, P., R. Perdue, and L. Allen (1990). Rural Resident Tourism Perceptions and Attitudes by Community Level of Tourism. Journal of
Travel Research, 29: 3-9.
Matsuoka, J. (1991). Differential Perceptions of the Social Impacts of Tourism Development in a Rural Hawaiian Community. Social Development Issues, 13: 55-65.
Paradis, T. (2000). Conceptualizing Small Towns as Urban Places. Urban
Geography, 21: 61-82.
Pearce, P. (1994). Tourist-Resident Impacts: Examples, Explanations and
Emerging Solutions. In Global Tourism: The Next Decade, ed. W.
Theobald. Oxford, UK: Butterworth-Heinemann, pp. 103-23.
Perdue, R., P. Long, and Y. Kang (1999). Boomtown Tourism and Resident
Quality of Life: The Marketing of Gaming to Host Community Residents Journal of Business Research, 44: 165-77.
Rees, L. (1989) Ive Been Working on the RailroadNow a Reality for
Williams. Williams News, September 14, p. 5.
Richmond, A. (1995). Cowboys, Miners, Presidents, and Kings: The Story of
the Grand Canyon Railway. Flagstaff, AZ: Al Richmond.
Rothman, H. (1998). Devils Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century
American West. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
Skelcher, B. (1991). Preserving Main Street in the Heartland: The Main
Street Pilot Project in Madison, Indiana. Small Town, 22, SeptemberOctober: 4-13.
Spieler, M. (1991). Quality Design Needed to Create Towns Image of Itself. Williams News, April 18, pp. 1, 11.
Walle, A. (1997). Quantitative versus Qualitative Tourism Research. Annals of Tourism Research, 24: 524-36.
Williams News (1994). Grand Canyon Railways Offices to Remain in Williams. September 8, pp. 1, 11.
(1989). Economic Impact of the Railroad on Williams. January
12, p. 7.