Submitted by Katie Dudley, Community and Economic Development Extension Specialist, University of Illinois Extension
Tourism planning often begins with an outward-facing question: How can we attract more visitors?
Home First begins somewhere else: What should tourism do for the people who already live here?
Home First is a resident-first approach to tourism and outdoor recreation development created through University of Illinois Extension. It is designed for rural and small-town communities where tourism, visitor activity, and outdoor recreation may already affect daily life, even when the community has never formally considered itself a tourism destination.
Rather than beginning with branding, promotion, or attraction development, Home First begins with local observation, community conditions, shared purpose, and realistic next steps. It helps residents and local leaders understand tourism as part of a larger community system rather than as a stand-alone industry.
Two cross-cutting ideas anchor the program. The first is regenerative and restorative tourism, which asks whether tourism and outdoor recreation leave a community stronger than they found it. The second is outdoor recreation as community infrastructure, which recognizes that rivers, trails, parks, public lands, and natural assets contribute not only to visitor appeal but also to resident well-being, youth opportunity and retention, public health, stewardship, quality of life, and long-term resilience.
Moving from Observation to Stewardship
Home First is organized into six modules:
Tourism Starts at Home
Participants map where tourism, visitor activity, and outdoor recreation already intersect with community systems and everyday life.
What Home First Means
The group identifies what tourism should strengthen for residents before growth, visibility, or promotion becomes the focus.
Local Identity, Story, and What Should Be Strengthened
Participants name the stories, places, values, working landscapes, traditions, and everyday realities that feel meaningful and rooted, and identify what deserves protection, restoration, or stronger care.
Community-Centered Tourism Audit
The community assesses what is working well, what needs attention, and what is “not ready yet” across areas such as downtown vitality, local business readiness, food and lodging, outdoor assets, interpretation, basic amenities, volunteer capacity, and stewardship.
From Insight to Community-Shaped Opportunity
Participants select a small number of realistic actions that fit community values, local capacity, and resident benefit.
Stewardship, Learning, and Keeping Tourism Useful to the Place
The group defines what success should look like over time—beyond dollar signs—and creates a practical process for reviewing, adjusting, and continuing the work.
Each module produces a usable community output, including a systems map, resident-first purpose statement, identity and restoration inventory, tourism audit, short action plan, and stewardship and evaluation framework. The participant worksheets reinforce a central measure of success: not simply whether more visitors arrive, but whether the place becomes stronger, healthier, and better supported.
An Adaptable Extension Process
Home First is intentionally facilitation centered. It can be delivered as a half-day introductory workshop, a full-day working session, a three-part series, or a six-session local process. The structure remains consistent, while the examples, vocabulary, and activities are adapted to local conditions.
Home First does not assume that every community needs “more” tourism. It helps communities determine what kind of outside-facing activity fits the place, what needs stronger support before additional promotion, and what tourism-related investments would still benefit the residents on an ordinary weekday without a surge of visitors.
The premise is simple: tourism should not require a community to perform a version of itself for outsiders. It should help residents care for, strengthen, and share what makes the place worth calling home.