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Now, more than in previous decades, people respond well to quality and taste. The trip is about the experience. People with more money to spend in your town are particularly apt to be sensitive to incongruous elements that seem to ruin the atmosphere.

The most appealing towns and cities demonstrate that not every single building and business must contribute to the ambiance, and that a place can still be a magnetic destination even with a few mistakes thrown in. But try to avoid mistakes all the time, and thus to minimize the number of mistakes actually made.

Cultural economic development now is a recognized trend, and it applies to cities and towns with a strong sense of place and a strong cultural or higher education institution or a cultural or intellectual history of serious import. If you have something in your community of interest to intellectual historians or scholars, talk with them about how it might be enhanced. Sponsor that archaeological dig someone’s been wanting to do for years. The history of utopias or poets might not be your cup of tea, but someone’s interested. And if you can make your “brand” strong enough, the international community will be interested.

Of course, there are numerous exceptions to the “quality and taste” suggestion. Someone could argue that the most noteworthy examples of tourism and economic development really brand themselves as places to party without inhibition and absolutely without taste. And others are the hunting and fishing paradises, where not a single white tablecloth restaurant need apply.

But in these cases, the larger trend applies: experience-based tourism and economic development will prevail. Las Vegas and hunting clubs provide distinctive experiences, and within their particular specialty, they must provide quality.

Particularly when seeking to expand on experience-based tourism, look to the locals for the entrepreneurs you need to build new attractions, retail, and accommodations. They likely will be the most passionate about your sense of place, and your job as a proponent of tourism and economic development is to inspire them to think afresh about those portraits and artifacts that are rotting in the attic.

Festivals are another type of experience-based tourism and economic development. If you’ve been doing a successful festival for several years, make sure you do some visitor surveys occasionally to find out what experience is growing stale and what is becoming more attractive.

Quiz vendors carefully, as the continued success of your festival depends on their attendance. Can you offer them a hospitality suite, Sunday brunch respite, or more set-up help? Is your pricing structure irritating or inconvenient in some fashion you could remedy?

Use the festival to educate and educate some more about what your location offers during off-festival times. While the festivals draw crowds, those very crowds may make it more difficult to explore everything you have to offer.

Conferences and classes are another major type of experience tourism and economic development. Cater to them. Organizing a conference around an important attraction begins with asking the person in charge for contact information for the major expert in the field of Victorian architecture, Emily Dickinson, the steam engine, or whatever your attraction is. If you can find one somewhat receptive expert, you can at least obtain from them the contact information for other experts if that one won’t help you organize a conference. Using a referral chain, you can locate top talent and then over-deliver their every preference in setting up the first annual conference.

Note that another major tourism and economic development trend, the self-contained resort, retreat center, dude ranch, or spa, is an older variation on the experience-based tourism trend. Now the challenge is for a community that consists of many entrepreneurs and property owners to adapt the same kind of collaboration that makes those destinations so appealing as an unusual experience.

Reprinted with permission from http://www.useful-community-development.org/