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Branding Utah: Industrial Tourism in the Postwar American West
SUSAN SESSIONS RUGH
In the last half of the twentieth century, state governments played an important role in building the tourism industry in the West. Using Utah as a case study, this article argues that creating a state brand and attracting corporate support were key strategies for success, culminating in the 2002 winter Olympics.
Durante la última mitad del siglo veinte, los gobiernos estatales desempeñaron un papel importante en el desarollo del turismo en el Oeste. Utilzando el estado de Utah como studio de caso, este artículo mantiene que el crear una marca estatal y el atraer apoyo de companías privadas fueron dos estrategias claves para lograr éxito, culminando en las Olympiadas de invierno del 2002.
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IN 1957, EDWARD ABBEY BEGAN TWO YEARS of summer service in Arches National Monument near Moab, Utah, at a time "when the tourist business was poor." He returned for a third stint a few years later, and the dramatic changes in the patterns of tourism prompted him to write his well-known environmental manifesto, Desert Solitaire. Based on a journal he kept while working at Arches, the book is valuable not only as a jeremiad against modernism, but also as a view of the postwar habit of automobile tourism. In Chapter 5, aptly titled "Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks," Abbey vents his spleen. "Industrial tourism has arrived," he declares. "Where once a few adventurous people came on weekends to camp for a night or two and enjoy a taste of the primitive and remote, you will now find serpentine streams of baroque automobiles pouring in and out, all through the spring and summer." Abbey called crowds in vehicles "mechanized tourists" and argued they were "the consumers, the raw material and the victims of Industrial Tourism."1 |
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Abbey's label of industrial tourism has proved to be an apt metaphor for travel in the West after World War II. Industrial tourism implies the marketing of tourism as a commodity to be sold for mass consumption. While Abbey saw tourists as victims of motels, the oil companies, and the automotive industry, he overlooked a prime player in the making of industrial tourism in the West—the states. I argue that state officials in the West played a major, but heretofore overlooked, role in promoting tourism. To successfully attract tourists, each state created a brand or recognizable identity that differentiated them from other states. And because state travel offices supplied publicity materials to other tourism promotion organizations, such as the American Automobile Association, the state brand characterized the image of the state throughout the tourism promotion infrastructure. Historians of western tourism have rightly argued that the federal government and recreation corporations were influential agents in the tourism infrastructure, but I contend that each state was a linchpin in the complicated machinery of industrial tourism in the West. Understanding how states fostered cooperation between private industry and public agencies allows us to appreciate the magnitude of the tourism boom and its impact on the modern West.2 |
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Utah makes a good case study because, like other western states, tourism has been a vital part of the state's economy and an integral force in the development of the western region. Utah's hosting of the 2002 Winter Olympics was a successful outcome of state efforts to craft an image that appealed to a varied tourist audience. Utah was unlike other western states in its distinctive Mormon history and culture, but how it dealt with its peculiar identity offers lessons in how each state grappled with a unique history and culture to promote a distinctive brand identity.3 Branding the state was a key strategy in Utah's transformation from a rural backwater to a world player in the tourism enterprise. |
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