The early birth of tourism in Holmes County is attributed to the Swiss cheese industry in the 60's and Neil Zuercher's promotion for travelers in Ohio and some nearby cities to experience a 'one-tank trip' to Amish country during the energy crisis of the 70's. This birth into tourism occurred when Holmes county had no fast-food chain restaurants, and only a couple of Amish and Swiss food restaurants catering to local lunch work crowds, day trippers and Saturday out-of-towners.  These early tourist opportunities were not considered tremendously significant back then, since our community didn't consider itself a novelty. The Amish have lived in these hills since the 1830's and the community did not historically seek out to become economically dependent upon tourism as in the model of Lancaster Pa., and other cities. Fifty years ago, only a few would have imagined that tourists would be interested in visiting this quaint, rather plain, agriculturally based community in Ohio, at least not in the volumes they visit today.

Prior to the 1970's, the emphasis on economic growth and development in the county was to establish manufacturing opportunities to balance the agriculture based family incomes and offer an income opportunity for the local laborer. The increasing effects of tourism were not felt in the Holmes County community until after the first large Inn and several Amish restaurants were established. There were travelers that came and went in droves, mostly in the fall, but since we did not service them very much and hadn't provided many opportunities for travelers to spend their money, except for swiss cheese, Amish quilts, some furniture  and cabinets - sales taxes didn't increase at increasing rates till into the early 1990's (McKee, 1999).

The chart  summarizes the data gathered for the past twenty-one years to determine a conservative estimate of the non-residents' Awillingness to pay for goods and services in Holmes County. This actual data, and in some cases estimates, have been adjusted for inflation to 1992 dollars. Also taken into account is the annual population growth of permanent residents and the per capita income changes of these residents. This data has never been brought together in this manner before this study.

Data on local sales taxes, population, and per capita income should account for most of the spending of local residents once the adjustments for inflation, changes in population and per capita income are considered. Some factors for future study and the effect they have had on local income sales tax receipts paid by residents vs. non-residents would be the reduction in farm implement dealership sales opportunities, the increased opportunity to buy a variety of retail sales items, how lumber and building supplies are purchased for both residential and non-residential projects and the increase in mail order sales over the twenty-one year period.

There will be many externalities when examining broad measures of per capita income and sales tax indicators as a measure of the willingness of consumers to purchase goods and services. But, in fact, sales tax is purely an indicator that goods and services were purchased by someone. For the purpose of this study: goal 1) to determine a measurable dollar impact as a result of the visitors (tourism) in Holmes County-linking the value of the view; there is validity in the WTP example offered in this case study. The attempt is to account for the total taxable goods and services purchased by county residents in adjusting for the total per capita income gains of these residents and the total population increases after factors of inflation over the 21 year period. All other taxable purchases, represented by sales tax receipts, would have been made by non-residents. When considering that tourism, and its' related economic effects started in Holmes county 10 to 15 years before the period of sales tax income data reviewed here, or was ever collected, it is concluded that the dollars gained as a result of non-resident impact will not represent all of the sales tax dollars generated by visitors/tourism. Thus, if there are gains indicated, they will be conservative estimates.