Introduction The mission of the National Extension Tourism network (NET) is to integrate research, education and outreach within Cooperative Extension and Sea Grant to support sustainable tourism, thus contributing to the long-term economic development, environmental stewardship, and socio-cultural wellbeing of communities and regions. NET was formed in 1994, with the first conference taking place in 1995. NET holds biennial conferences that move to different regions of the US. The 2021 NET Conference took place in Savannah, GA and online November 7-10. Since our network last met in 2019, our tourism communities have faced immense challenges from natural disasters and social unrest to an ongoing global pandemic. How we as tourism professionals have responded and adapted to these changes also continues to evolve. The NET 2021 conference theme of “Navigating the Uncharted” reflected on these transformations and catalyzed future extension programming that serves our stakeholders’ needs. To increase access to the impactful work presented at the conference, we are publishing the NET 2021 conference proceedings. The intended audiences for the proceedings include Extension faculty and staff, researchers, tourism professionals, and practitioners who can benefit from the wide array of applied research and outreach programs presented in the proceedings. The second audience includes faculty and students in tourism and outdoor recreation related academic programs who can benefit from having access to current applied research and programs that highlight how Extension and partners help address opportunities, issues and trends in tourism and outdoor recreation. The proceedings will be shared widely via the National Extension Tourism website as an open source publication for faculty, students and practitioners. This proceedings document contains eight submissions from the 2021 NET Conference, which we have grouped into the three categories of: data, training, and marketing. Goetz et al., Qian, and Schmidt et al. shared recent data about the state of the tourism industry in the U.S. Phillips, Burkhart-Kriesel, and Leeds and Barrett provided examples of cutting-edge training programs from across the country. Finally, Stewart, Higgins and Sterling detailed a few examples of marketing programs. We hope these papers will inspire you in your work supporting tourism as it continues to recover and evolve towards resilience and regeneration.
2021 NET Conference Proceedings
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