Objectives
Getting Organized
How to Conduct this Step
TOP | POTENTIAL PROJECT IDENTIFICATION |  |
What projects will be of value to your potential visitors?
What projects will be of value to your community?
What projects can help your community's
tourism industry have a competitive advantage?
| Purpose |
This section will lead you through a structured, criteria-based process to help you objectively choose a few projects with the most potential for success. By selecting projects that meet the criteria posed, you will increase your chances of tourism being an effective strategy for achieving your broad community economic development goals.
Your inventory, combined with the ideas and imagination of action
committee members, probably resulted in a lengthy list of possible tourism
development projects. Realistically, you can't develop everything at once,
so you must set some priorities. This step in a sense makes the first cut
on your list of projects. You will still need to complete the impact
analysis on each priority project to make the final decision on whether to
actually pursue a given project or not. You will complete that analysis in
Section
9 of this handbook.
| Objectives |
At the end of this section, the action committee will have:
- generated a prioritized list of potential short term and long term tourism projects. These will be the committee's development priorities.
- brainstorm tourism project and product ideas.
- predict each project's potential value to your typical visitors.
- evaluate the likelihood of potential projects benefiting the overall community.
- compare potential projects to those of your competitors.
| Getting Organized |
The full action committee should complete this step together so that you can come to a consensus on which projects to pursue.
One option is to hold a committee meeting during which you will complete this entire step at once. You may wish to seek out an Extension agent or other experienced person in your area to act as facilitator.
Summary of Steps
| Step
Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 |
Description
Assemble an exhaustive list of potential tourism projects
Refine the project list Prioritize the project list |
Form # |
Another option is to start the brainstorming activity (Step 1) in a meeting earlier in the assessment process, as shown in Figures X-1, X-2, and Attachments X-A. People can add to the brainstorming lists at each committee meeting. This strategy can help people feel like they are moving forward on project ideas as they work through the sometimes tedious and time consuming planning tasks. If you use this strategy, once you complete the Inventory process, you can move right onto refining and prioritizing your project list (Step 2 and 3).