The Upper Valley Could Be a Tourist Destination

A federally funded study begun near the end of the coronavirus pandemic is raising a question for Upper Valley residents to chew on: To what extent do they want the area to become a tourist destination?

While the region has its share of tourist attractions—Woodstock, VINS, King Arthur Baking, and the Appalachian Trail, among others—it does not market itself with an eye toward bringing in more visitors. The study, conducted by Cooperative Extension researchers, found that the area has untapped potential to do so.

For the moment, that’s all it is: a study. The researchers presented their data to a group of business owners, town officials, and nonprofit leaders over lunch at Three Tomatoes in Lebanon on Oct. 14. Whether to act on the information will be up to local participants. “I’d say the overall response was positive,” Morgan Brophy, executive director of the Upper Valley Business Alliance (UVBA), said in an interview. “…It was just about how we approach (tourism) as a region.”

But Brophy and other attendees of the data presentation also strike a note of caution. Any effort to market the area as a tourism destination can’t shift the focus away from the Valley’s greatest challenge: The low supply and high cost of housing. “It’s really easy to allow tourism to become this wedge between residents and visitors,” Brophy said.

In addition to the Upper Valley, the researchers also studied a rural region of West Virginia and another in Pennsylvania. The Upper Valley became part of the study because of a working relationship between Cooperative Extension at the University of New Hampshire and the UVBA. Funding for the research came from the USDA’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture.

People visit the Upper Valley primarily for education and health care, and “the area doesn’t see itself as a tourism destination,” Lisa Chase, an Extension professor at the University of Vermont, said in an interview. Professors at UVM and UNH partnered with colleagues at West Virginia University and Penn State University.

While both Vermont and New Hampshire have state agencies responsible for tourism, the Upper Valley is mostly an outlier, at the edge of the two states. As a region, it has always been a bit insular, focused more on private retreats than on public attractions. Interstate highways have changed that perspective, but the sense of seclusion in the hills is deeply ingrained.

The pandemic increased migration to rural areas, including the Upper Valley, while diminishing tourism. The aim of the study was to look at how rural parts of the country could encourage tourism in a sustainable way, Jada Lindblom, an Extension professor at UNH, said in an interview.

“We’re really asking the question about community well–being,” Lindblom said. “We’re not assuming that tourism is going to be a good thing.”

The report makes a case for tourism, noting that the Upper Valley already has more resources than federal benchmarks for tourist destinations, such as cultural attractions, parks and outdoor recreation, and restaurants. “Tourism development should be part of a diversified economic development strategy with an overall goal of improving the quality of life for residents and investing in year-round attractions that appeal to visitors and residents from a breadth of incomes and life-stages,” the executive summary of the researchers’ report says.

Any increase in tourism, though, could have an effect on housing, the report warns: “Sullivan County in particular stands out as a point of concern, with over half of renters meeting the criteria for cost burden, suggesting that local residents may face displacement pressures even as the county benefits from its seasonal housing economy.”

One of the slides that stuck out to people who attended the presentation had to do with the growth of short-term rental properties in the study area, Orange and Windsor counties in Vermont and Grafton and Sullivan counties in New Hampshire. From 2019 to 2025, the number of short-term rentals grew from 5,256 to 7,105. That’s a 35 percent increase.

Tourism also can be a driver of gentrification, as well-heeled visitors buy second homes at prices local residents can’t afford, a dynamic borne out during the pandemic. In a report this year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development noted that tourism, when poorly managed, “can displace long-term residents, overwhelm local infrastructure, exacerbate environmental degradation, and heighten social tensions, ultimately undermining community cohesion and sustainability.”

“Housing absolutely needs to be a part of the conversation as we’re trying to focus more attention on tourism,” Lindblom said.

While attracting visitors is always on the minds of town leaders and business owners, it’s just a piece of the economic development puzzle, Kim Souza, owner of Revolution, the clothing stores in White River Junction and Hanover, said in an interview. Housing is the primary economic and social issue affecting the Upper Valley, said Souza, a former Hartford Selectboard member. “Yes, we want visitors to come, but it’s not any kind of urgent priority.”

Still, some organizations rely on tourism and would be glad to see more visitors. Honor Hingston-Cox, who oversees public and media relations for the Montshire Museum of Science, said that the Norwich institution is focused mainly on bringing in visitors from nearby, as tourism from Canada has declined and the cost of fuel has cut into car trips. Like others who were at the presentation, she wonders where the research might lead. If other tourism-dependent establishments in the area decide to keep doing their own thing, rather than join a regional effort, then any plan to market the Upper Valley is probably a nonstarter.

“They ended up by saying, ‘You could turn this into a tourist destination if you want to, but you would have to want to,’ ” Hingston-Cox said of the data presentation.

And there are certainly organizations that want to. Opera North Executive Director Evans Haile has been working for the past several years to turn the Upper Valley into a summer destination for cultural tourism. Opera North is developing Blow-Me-Down Farm in Cornish in partnership with the Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park.

“One of our big challenges is getting the word out about all the things that are going on in the summer,” Haile said in an interview. The area is better known for its winter attractions than its summer offerings, he said. He was not aware of the tourism study, and was not in attendance at the data presentation.

The grant funding for the tourism study is winding down. The researchers are setting up a dashboard for their data, and are available to consult with businesses and community leaders. Whether their work leads to an organized push for more visitors depends on how the Upper Valley sees itself. Is it primarily a redoubt for locals, or open to all comers?

“What really matters next,” Chase said, “is how the community leaders and merchants want to move forward. So we’ll be paying attention to that.”

Alex Hanson is a freelance writer and editor, and a former longtime staff writer and editor for the Valley News. He lives in South Royalton.