(Excerpted from the 2020-2025 Strategic Plan.)
For more than 50 years the Cooperative Extension Service has been engaged in research, educational programming and outreach to support communities engaged in tourism efforts. At the National Workshop on Cooperative Extension’s Role in Outdoor Recreation in 1967, R.P. Davison, Director of the Vermont Extension Service, explicitly identified a need for “recreation and tourism programming…to become an integral part of Extension programs.” This call for sound programing that could assist local leaders and governing officials in making informed decisions about recreation and tourism as a component of total community development was reiterated a decade later in the CES Recreation and Tourism Task Force report, RECREATION AND TOURISM, Challenges and Opportunities for Cooperative Extension (1978).
In 1993, the National Extension Travel and Tourism Advisory Committee (NETTAC) drafted a document entitled Tourism Development: A Suggested Approach for the Cooperative Extension Service, outlining the need for Extension education in tourism and actions for “Cooperative Extension Service (CES) to change its program priorities, organizational structure and external relationships to meet the shifting needs and priorities of society.”
The document set out a plan with five action items.
- Action 1 To articulate the education and research roles of CES and tourism to external and internal stakeholders. To establish tourism and travel as a recognized, supported program with the Cooperative Extension System. To develop partnerships for programming in tourism and travel.
- Action 2 Establish educational initiatives in tourism and travel for clientele and for Extension faculty and staff.
- Action 3 Establish a nationwide library of tourism and travel information, data and reports. Suggested name: Tourism Information Resource System(TIRS)
- Action 4 Build a national research base and a comprehensive research agenda for travel and tourism. If the CES is to become more effective in its traditional role of disseminating research findings to communities and to individual needs, it is especially important that CES assign a higher priority to tourism development research.
- Action 5 Hold another National Cooperative Extension Workshop on tourism and travel within the next two years.
Subsequent efforts to move the plan forward by the original volunteer task force led to the creation of the National Extension Tourism Design Team (NETDT). Established to provide leadership to National Extension Tourism (NET) work collectively across the U.S., the design team is a loosely structured group geographically aligned with the four Regional Rural Development Centers. Historically, two tourism-focused Extension or Sea Grant representatives from each region, plus a representative from USDA in Washington served on the Design Team to provide leadership toward the five stated actions. These individuals are volunteers and the Design Team has operated without a budget. Over the years, NET has received financial and administrative support from the Regional Rural Development Centers (RRDC). Land Grant Universities and federal partners have supported this work.
Over the years, NET has succeeded in addressing each of the five actions. However, without a mandate, funding and formal structure, the Design Team has struggled to maintain consistent positioning of tourism as a recognized and supported program area within Cooperative Extension System nationally. NET has achieved a number of successes including tourism and outdoor recreation programming and research regionally.
NET provides strategies to collaborate and share including a website, regular calls, and joint programming around topics such as agritourism, community or rural tourism development, and coastal tourism. An example of successfully shared programming is the Northeast Regional Center supported multi-state training on the First Impressions program that led to three additional states adopting the program and adapting it to local needs. NET members also collaborate on research and scholarship as evidenced by the recently published online volume of case studies entitled Innovative and Promising Practices in Sustainable Tourism: Case Studies.
The NETDT also coordinates a national conference approximately every two years as a primary vehicle for sharing and networking. NET has hosted 11 conferences.
The most recent conference was in October 2019 with a theme of “Sustainable Tourism and Outdoor Recreation.” Attendees included Extension and Sea Grant professionals from more than 20 states, and multiple federal partner agencies including USDA, Forest Service and National Park Service. Also attending were tourism researchers and professionals from Canada, U.S. Travel and the Conservation Fund. During the final session, participants discussed their expanding work in tourism and outdoor recreation, and supported re-establishing NET as the preeminent network within CES for sustainable tourism research and education. Encouraged, the NETDT agreed on the need for a new strategic plan.
In March 2020, the NETDT, with the support of the Regional Rural Development Centers and USDA, met to draft an updated strategic plan highlighting the important role CES and Sea Grant can, and do, play in assisting communities across the U.S. to benefit from tourism and outdoor recreation. Attending the March 1 and 2 meeting in Savannah: Doug Arbogast, West Virginia University Extension; Lisa Chase, University of Vermont Extension; Cynthia Messer, University of Minnesota Tourism Center; Andy Northrop, Michigan State University Extension; Stacy Tomas, Oklahoma State University; April Turner, South Carolina Sea Grant; and Bryan Fluech, Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant. Design Team members not present but who provided input via survey and review include Miles Phillips, Oregon State University Sea Grant and Extension; Diane Van Wyngarden, Iowa State University Extension; Penny Whitman, University of New Hampshire Extension; and international collaborators Suzanne Ainsley and Nicole Vaugeois.
Cooperative Extension Service and Sea Grant tourism efforts historically, and the foresight of early leaders in these organizations to create this national network around the work, have positioned National Extension Tourism to be seen as experts in tourism research, research-based programming, and outreach now and into the future.