Exploring the Role and Opportunity of the Visitor Economy for Main Streets in Canada

Main streets are community hubs of economic and cultural activity, often represented by a business organization tasked with improving the experience and environment through place making and management, and marketing to attract visitors. These responsibilities often overlap with the functions and roles of tourism destination organizations but on a more local level. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to advance conceptualizations of the visitor economy and main streets as destinations to further understand their role and potential within tourism destination frameworks. This qualitative exploratory study involved a thematic analysis of semistructured interviews with 36 representatives of Canadian main street organizations [Business Improvement Areas (BIAs)]. Findings demonstrate that visitor economy engagement is part of the work and function of main street organizations, and that main streets are both destinations in their own right and components of wider regional tourism systems. COVID-19 created immediate and potentially sustained demand for local travel and lad to the establishment and strengthening of partnerships between organizations representing communities at different scales. Incorporating main streets into the wider destination ecosystem could help maximize visitor economy opportunities benefiting both the local and wider destinations. This study contributes to the conceptual understanding of main streets as destinations, and the visitor economy. Main streets and the organizations that represent them are positioned as key actors in the management and marketing of destinations, a topic receiving limited attention in the literature.