The extraction problem
Across America, millions of people live in communities that draw visitors in staggering numbers. Hocking Hills attracts four million visitors a year to a county of 28,000 people. Sevier County, Tennessee — home to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge — records nearly $4 billion in annual tourist spending. The Great Smoky Mountains are the most visited national park in the country.
The residents of these places live with the consequences every day: traffic that turns a ten-minute grocery run into forty-five minutes, rents inflated by investors converting housing to short-term rentals, emergency services stretched thin by tourist incidents, roads and trails worn down faster than local budgets can repair them. The landscape, the character, the livability of these communities — all of it is being consumed, at scale, by visitors.
And the economic benefits of that consumption flow almost entirely to business owners, cabin investors, hotel corporations, and Airbnb hosts — many of whom don't live in the community at all. A nurse in Logan, Ohio who has lived in Hocking County her whole life receives no share of the $163 million that tourists spend there every year. A retired schoolteacher in Townsend, Tennessee gets nothing from the $611 million spent by visitors to Blount County. A family in Bryson City, North Carolina doesn't see a dime of the hundreds of millions flowing through Swain County.
"When you live in a tourist town, you pay the price of tourism every single day. The Tourist Dividend says that you should get paid for it, too."
This is the extraction problem. Tourism takes from the commons — the public land, the natural beauty, the culture, the small-town character — and concentrates the proceeds among those fortunate enough to own the businesses that serve visitors. The people who are the community, who maintain it and live with it year-round, are treated as externalities.
The dividend solution
The Tourist Dividend is a policy framework with a simple mechanism: collect a small surcharge — 1 to 5 percent — on tourist spending in a community, deposit that revenue into a dedicated Dividend Fund, and distribute it as equal annual cash payments to every verified resident. One check per person per year. No means testing, no applications, no bureaucratic gatekeeping.
The math at Hocking County's proposed 5% rate: $282 per person annually, or $1,128 for a family of four. Modest — we don't pretend otherwise. But in rural Appalachian Ohio, $1,128 covers a winter's heating oil, a year's car insurance, or one month of rent. And as Hocking Hills tourism continues its 40%-per-decade growth trajectory, that $282 becomes $500 by 2030 and keeps climbing — with zero additional legislation required.
At higher-yield destinations the numbers are genuinely transformative. Sevier County, Tennessee would generate $1,929 per person at 5%. Teton County, Wyoming — Jackson Hole — would yield over $3,600 per person. The same equal-payment, no-bureaucracy model, applied to the tourism revenue already flowing through these communities.
The Alaska Precedent
Since 1982, the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend has paid every eligible Alaska resident an equal annual share of state oil revenue. It was created by Republican Governor Jay Hammond. It has been increased by governors of both parties. Sarah Palin cut the state budget while raising the dividend. No governor has ever proposed eliminating it.
The PFD is the proof of concept that a resource royalty paid equally to all residents is not only economically feasible but enormously politically durable. The Tourist Dividend applies identical logic to tourism — the natural resource that rural communities across America actually have.
Why start in Hocking County?
The locations with the biggest potential dividends — Sevier County, Tennessee; Grand County, Utah; Teton County, Wyoming — are also where implementation is hardest. Tennessee law explicitly restricts hotel tax revenue to "tourism promotion." Wyoming has no home rule authority and no ballot initiative process. Utah is a Dillon's Rule state where the Republican legislature has already overridden local tourism management efforts.
Hocking County wins on the combination of factors that actually matter for a first-ever pilot in American history:
Clearest legal path. Ohio Revised Code §5739.08(A) allows any Ohio municipality to levy a lodging excise tax for "any lawful purpose" — the most permissive language found in any state in our legal research. No tourism-use restriction. No voter referendum. A city council vote is sufficient.
No organized opposition. Hocking Hills tourism is dominated by small independent cabin owners and local outfitters — not Cedar Point, not Dollywood, not Marriott. There is no corporate lobbying infrastructure to mobilize against a dividend proposal.
Political cover already exists. A sitting Hocking County commissioner has publicly stated that the county needs to "figure out a way to take some pressure off the residents." That's not a quote we manufactured. That's an elected official signaling openness.
High growth, low baseline. Today's modest $282 per person is not the endpoint — it's the floor. Tourism is growing at 8%+ annually. The infrastructure built for a $282 dividend scales automatically as tourism revenue grows. The first program in America gets built here; the high-yield programs follow.
How this gets built
What we believe
Who we are
TouristDividend.org is an independent policy advocacy project. We are not affiliated with any political party, tourism industry organization, or government agency. We have no financial stake in tourism in any of the 26 communities we have researched.
Our goal is singular: to demonstrate, clearly and with real data, that a Tourist Dividend is economically viable, legally achievable, and politically feasible — and to build enough public support that at least one community implements it.
We are journalists, researchers, and residents who believe that the communities that make tourism possible deserve more than congestion, higher rents, and the satisfaction of knowing that someone else is getting rich from their home.
If you are a Hocking County resident who wants to get involved, reach out. If you are a journalist or researcher who wants access to our full data and legal analysis, get in touch. If you live in another overtouristed community and want us to model what a dividend could look like where you live, let us know.
See what your community could receive.
Choose from 26 researched communities and calculate the exact annual dividend at any tax rate. Real tourism data, transparent formula.