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It is no secret that the decline of the coal industry has created tumultuous economic conditions in Eastern Kentucky. Such conditions have prompted local officials to get creative in order to expand economic opportunities in the region. Unfortunately, this creativity seems to have stalled after finding the holy grail of dead-end development ideas: “adventure tourism,” or in layman’s terms, ATV trails.
Perhaps the most successful model of the ATV tourism industry is West Virginia’s over 700-mile Hatfield-McCoy Trail System. While a 2020 economic impact report from Marshall University shows the trail system to generate a not insubstantial amount of revenue for the region, there are some other key data points from the study which place the trail system in context for broader discussions of regional economic development. The geography and economic makeup of the region encompassing the Hatfield-McCoy Trails is similar to that of Eastern Kentucky, therefore the findings of Marshall study could be a useful indicator of the prospects for ATV trail tourism in the East Kentucky region.
The trails draw about 56,000 annual visitors to the 14-county region. However, in 2018 the total population of the region was 516,346. That means that the total annual visitors drawn by the trail system is less than 11% of the region’s population -- a population that decreased by over 29,000 residents (a -5.4% decrease) from 2014 to 2018. In that same four-year period, regional labor force declined by over 16,000, a -7.6% drop from 2014. Moreover, the regional number of establishments in the food and drink industry, the number of establishments in the arts, entertainment, and recreation industry, and the number of gas stations declined from 2007-2017, while the number of accommodations increased by a meager five establishments over the ten-year span.
The study also included a survey of over 2,000 Trailfest attendees. Nearly 60% of attendees responded that they had first heard of the trail system by “word of mouth.” The overwhelming majority of survey respondents came from the Appalachian region, with the highest represented states being Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina. Notably, Kentucky was not even in the top-ten states represented by the survey results.
These numbers are far from indicative of a bustling tourism industry. ATV tourism is a band-aid; it may help blunt a small amount of Appalachian economic hemorrhaging, but it cannot stop the bleeding. While the trails do generate a helpful amount of regional revenue, they are incapable of sustaining long-term economic growth. The Hatfield-McCoy ATV trails have not produced any population growth (or even stopped population loss). They have not increased the number of complimentary establishments to the tourism industry (including restaurants, gas stations, and entertainment facilities), and it can be reasonably inferred from survey data that most tourists to the area learn of the trails by word of mouth -- lending to a rather niche audience, particularly those who already have ties to the ATV industry. Eastern Kentuckians need to focus their energy and their policy toward economic stimuli which have produced widely-demonstrated results within the Commonwealth, not toward an industry whose success is questionable at best.
Austin Dillon is a McConnell Scholar in the class of 2022. He is studying economics and political science at the University of Louisville.