ABSTRACT
Scenic travel routes have been developed to provide opportunities for tourism and recreation and to promote economic development especially in rural areas. However, maintaining an iconic attraction requires a collaborative destination management effort to keep it viable. The Cabot Trail, Nova Scotia, Canada is used in this paper as a case study for a scenic heritage route revitalization process. The Tourism Area Life Cycle model stages are used to illustrate the tourism development and decline on the Cabot Trail. This paper is a detailed documentation and analysis of the impact of a not-for-profit volunteer organization’s efforts to revitalize the Cabot Trail, through collaboration with local businesses, community groups and various levels of government and funding agencies. It draws upon the drive tourism, heritage trails and tourism revitalization literature. It fills a gap in the knowledge on heritage trails by illustrating a revitalization process that could be repeated in other areas experiencing similar issues.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to all of the operators and community groups on the Cabot Trail for your hundreds of hours of volunteer work on the CTWA initiatives. Thank you as well for the board of directors, municipal, federal and provincial government for lending their expertise and financial support.
Disclosure statement
There is no potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Note on contributor
Dr Kim Lemky is an Associate Researcher at Brandon University, Manitoba, Canada at the Rural Development Institute (and in 2016 was the Acting Director from January to June) and the Centre for Aboriginal and Rural Education Studies. She has taught at the University of New Brunswick in the Faculties of Business and Arts for both the undergraduate and MBA programs. After completing her PhD at the University of Waterloo, she was the executive director of a not-for-profit organization, responsible for destination development on the Cabot Trail, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. Her research interests lie in destination management, community led tourism initiatives, economic and social impact assessment of UNESCO designated global geoparks and national park management.