rural tourism wikipedia

Why Rural Tourism Is The Next Big Thing

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Rural tourism is an important part of the tourism industry around the world. From walks in the Brecon Beacons , to climbing Mount Kilimanjaro to eco tourism in The Gambia , many destinations rely on their rural tourism provision to bring in much needed revenue for the local economy.

But what does rural tourism actually mean? What is it all about? In this article I will explain what is meant by the term rural tourism, providing a range of academic and industry-based definitions. I will then discuss the importance of rural tourism, activities commonly found in rural tourism destinations and destinations offering rural tourism. I will also assess the positive and negative impacts of rural tourism.

What is rural tourism?

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Rural tourism is tourism which takes place in non-urbanised areas. These areas typically include (but are not limited to) national parks, forests , countryside areas and mountain areas.

Rural tourism is closely aligned with the concept of sustainable tourism , given that it is inherently linked to green spaces and commonly environmentally-friendly forms of tourism, such as hiking or camping.

Rural tourism is an umbrella term. The rural tourism industry includes a number of tourism types, such as golfing tourism, glamping or WOOFING .

Rural tourism is distinguished from urban tourism in that it typically requires the use of natural resources.

As with many types of tourism , there is no universally accepted definition of rural tourism. In fact, the term is actually quite ambiguous.

When defining the term rural tourism it is important first and foremost to understand what is and what isn’t ‘rural’.

The OECD defines a rural area as, ‘at the local level, a population density of 150 persons per square kilometre. At the regional level, geographic units are grouped by the share of their population that is rural into the following three types: predominantly rural (50%), significantly rural (15-50%) and predominantly urbanised regions (15%).

The Council of Europe further state that a ‘rural area’ is an area of inland or coastal countryside, including small towns and villages, where the main part of the area is used for:

• Agriculture, forestry, aquaculture, and fisheries.
• Economic and cultural activities of country-dwellers.
• Non-urban recreation and leisure areas or nature reserves.
• Other purposes such as housing.

Now that we know a little bit more about the ‘rural’ part, it is also important to understand what is meant by the term ‘tourism’. There are many definitions of tourism , but it is generally recognised that a tourist is a person who travels away from their home residence for at least 24 hours for leisure or business purposes.

It appears, therefore, that a person who travels to an area that is sparsely populated for more than 24 hours for leisure or business purposes is likely to qualify as a ‘rural tourist’.

The World Tourism Organisation , provide a little more clarity. They state that rural tourism is ‘a type of tourism activity in which the visitor’s experience is related to a wide range of products generally linked to nature-based activities, agriculture, rural lifestyle / culture , angling and sightseeing’.

Dernoi states that rural tourism occurs when there are activities in a ‘non-urban territory where human (land-related economic) activity is going on, primarily agriculture’.

The OECD prescribes that rural tourism should be:

• Located in rural areas.
• Functionally rural, built upon the rural world’s special features; small-scale enterprises, open space, contact with nature and the natural world, heritage, traditional societies, and traditional practices.
• Rural in scale – both in terms of building and settlements – and therefore, small scale.
• Traditional in character, growing slowly and organically, and connected with local families.
• Sustainable – in the sense that its development should help sustain the special rural character of an area, and in the sense that its development should be sustainability in its use of resources.
• Of many different kinds, representing the complex pattern of the rural environment, economy, and history.

Gökhan Ayazlar & Reyhan A. Ayazlar (2015) have collated a number of academic definitions of rural tourism. You can see a summary of this below.

Types of rural tourism areas

There are many different types of rural areas that are popular tourism destinations. These may be named slightly differently around the world. Here are some examples from the UK:

There are 15 National Parks in the UK which are protected areas because of their beautiful countryside, wildlife and cultural heritage.

A national park is a protected area. It is a location which has a clear boundary. It has people and laws that make sure that nature and wildlife are protected and that people can continue to benefit from nature without destroying it.

People live and work in the National Parks and the farms, villages and towns are protected along with the landscape and wildlife.

National Parks welcome visitors and provide opportunities for everyone to experience, enjoy and learn about their special qualities.

National Parks were first mentioned in 1931 in a government inquiry, however no action was taken. Public discontent led to a mass trespass on Kinder Scout (in the now known Peak District), five men were arrested. This led the Council for the protection for Rural England making and releasing a film in the cinemas calling for public help.

This public pressure culminates in the 1945 white paper on National Parks, leading to the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. In 1951 the Peak District became the first National Park.

An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) is exactly what it says it is: a precious landscape whose distinctive character and natural beauty are so outstanding that it is in the nation’s interest to safeguard them.

There are 38 AONBs in England and Wales. Created by the legislation of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949, AONBs represent 18% of the Finest Countryside in England and Wales. There are also 8 AONBs in Northern Ireland . Gower was the first AONB established in 1956.

Their care has been entrusted to the local authorities, organisations, community groups and the individuals who live and work within them or who value them.

Each AONB has been designated for special attention by reason of their high qualities. These include their flora, fauna, historical and cultural associations as well as scenic views.

AONB landscapes range from rugged coastline to water meadows to gentle downland and upland moors.

Sites of Special Scientific Interests are the country’s very best wildlife and geological sites.

SSSIs include some of the most spectacular and beautiful habitats; wetlands teeming with wading birds, winding chalk rivers, flower-rich meadows, windswept shingle beaches and remote upland peat bogs.

There are over 4,100 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) in England, covering around 8% of the country’s land area. More than 70% of these sites (by area) are internationally important for their wildlife and designated as Special Areas of Conservation (SACs), Special Protection Areas (SPAs) or Ramsar sites.

Special Areas of Conservation are areas which have been given special protection under the European Union’s Habitats Directive.

They provide increased protection to a variety of wild animals, plants and habitats and are a vital part of global efforts to conserve the world’s biodiversity.

Special Protection Areas are areas which have been identified as being of international importance for the breeding, feeding, wintering or the migration of rare and vulnerable species of birds found within European Union countries.

Ramsar sites are wetlands of international importance, designated under the Ramsar Convention.

Wetlands are defined as areas of marsh, fen, peatland or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish or salt, including areas of marine water the depth of which at low tide does not exceed six metres.

Read also- – Types of tourism: A glossary – Domestic tourism explained – What is the ‘shut-in economy’? Understanding the basics – Cultural tourism: Everything you need to know – Insta tourism: An explanation – What is globalisation? – Business tourism: What, why and where

Local Nature Reserves are for both people and wildlife. They offer people special opportunities to study or learn about nature or simply to enjoy it.

There are now more than 1400 LNRs in England. They range from windswept coastal headlands, ancient woodlands and flower-rich meadows to former inner city railways, abandoned landfill sites and industrial areas now re-colonised by wildlife. In total they cover about 35,000 ha.

This is an impressive natural resource which makes an important contribution to England’s biodiversity.

Heritage Coasts represent stretches of our most beautiful, undeveloped coastline , which are managed to conserve their natural beauty and, where appropriate, to improve accessibility for visitors.

Thirty-three per cent (1,057km) of scenic English coastline is conserved as Heritage Coasts. The first Heritage Coast to be defined was the famous white chalk cliffs of Beachy Head in Sussex and the latest is the Durham Coast. Now much of our coastline, such as the sheer cliffs of Flamborough Head and Bempton, with their huge seabird colonies, is protected as part of our coastal heritage.

European Geoparks are areas in Europe with an outstanding geological heritage. There are two in England, the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and the English Riviera in Devon.

Tourism makes up just one (important) part of the rural economy.

Rural tourism provides valuable commercial and employment opportunities for communities that are confronted with the growing challenge of offering viable livelihoods for their local populations.

Without these opportunities, people may be forced to relocate to more populous areas, often resulting in separated families and economic leakage in the local community.

Let me give you an example- In northern Thailand , many tourists choose to go on hiking tours, staying in homestays and spending their money in the rural communities. This provides local people with work opportunities that they would not otherwise be exposed to. Many women leave their home villages in Thailand to work in the sex tourism industry , where they can earn a far higher wage to support their families. But with the growth of rural tourism, many women have been able to avoid moving to the red light districts of Bangkok and Pattaya and have instead been able to make an income in the rural areas in which they live.

Moreover, rural tourism can help to disperse tourism in highly populated countries. This directs tourists away from some of the more well-known, busy areas and provides work opportunities and economic activity in alternative areas. It also helps to combat the challenge od limited carrying capacities in some destinations and the negative environmental impacts of tourism .

The rural tourism industry interlinks with a range of activity types, thus bringing economic benefit to a variety of areas. This is demonstrated in the figure below.

The roles and responsibilities of organisations involved in the management of rural tourism

Rural areas need to be managed in order to preserve its natural beauty, without limiting activities of economic benefit.

There are many organisations in which have an interest in rural areas and how they are managed and used. These include:

• National Trust
• National Association for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (NAAONB)
• English Heritage
• Countryside Alliance
• Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)
• Ramblers’ Association

The organisations involved in managing rural tourism will do things such as;

• Promote rural pursuits
• Give information
• Offer advice
• Provide revenue channels
• Legal enforcement
• Protect the environment
• Protect wildlife
• Educate people

Here is some more information about some of the major organisations that are involved with rural tourism:

Natural England is an Executive Non-departmental Public Body.

This means that although they are an independent organisation they have to report their activities and findings back to the Government (Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, DEFRA).

Their purpose is to protect and improve England’s natural environment and encourage people to enjoy and get involved in their surroundings.

They cover the whole of the England and work with people such as farmers, town and country planners, researchers and scientists, and the general public on a range of schemes and initiatives.

Their aim is to create a better natural environment that covers all of our urban, country and coastal landscapes, along with all of the animals, plants and other organisms that live with us.

Natural England is the government’s advisor on the natural environment. They provide practical advice, grounded in science, on how best to safeguard England’s natural areas for the benefit of everyone.

Their work is to ensure sustainable usage of the land and sea so that people and nature can thrive. Yet continuing to adapt and survive for future generations to enjoy.

Their responsibilities include:

• Managing England’s green farming schemes, paying nearly £400million/year to maintain two-third’s of agricultural land under agri-environment agreements
• Increasing opportunities for everyone to enjoy the wonders of the natural world
• Reducing the decline of biodiversity and licensing of protected species across England
• Designating National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty
• Managing most National Nature Reserves and notifying Sites of Special Scientific Interest
• One of Natural England’s initiatives includes Outdoors for All.
• The Outdoors for All programme began in 2008 with an action plan called Outdoors for All?
• This plan was in response to the Diversity Review which showed that some people were less likely to access the natural environment for recreation and other purposes.
• The under-represented groups were found to be disabled people, black and minority ethnic people, people who live in inner city areas and young people.
• In response Natural England are supporting other organisations in projects to get more of these under-represented groups to come to natural areas

VisitBritain is Britain’s national tourism agency, responsible for marketing Britain worldwide and developing Britain’s visitor economy.

Their mission is to build the value of tourism to Britain.

It is a non-departmental public body, funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, they work in partnership with thousands of organisations in the UK and overseas – the Government, the industry and other tourism bodies – to ensure that Britain is marketed in an inspirational and effective way around the world.

Their current priority is to deliver a four-year match funded global marketing programme which takes advantage of the unique opportunity of the Royal Wedding, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the 2012 Games to showcase Britain and attract new visitors from the tourism growth markets of Asia and Latin America and to reinvigorate our appeal in core markets such as the USA, France and Germany. This campaign aims to attract four million extra visitors to Britain, who will spend an additional £2 billion.

In 2010, Deloitte published a report on their contribution to the visitor economy. As part of the findings, the report demonstrates that their activity contributes £1.1 billion to the economy and delivers £150 million directly to the Treasury each year in tax take. They also create substantial efficiency savings – £159 million last year – on the public purse.

The National Trust was founded in 1895 by three Victorian philanthropists – Miss Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley.

Concerned about the impact of uncontrolled development and industrialisation, they set up the Trust to act as a guardian for the nation in the acquisition and protection of threatened coastline, countryside and buildings.

They work to preserve and protect the buildings, countryside and coastline of England, Wales and Northern Ireland , in a range of ways, through practical conservation, learning and discovery, and encouraging everyone to visit and enjoy their national heritage.

They also educate people about the importance of the environment and of preserving heritage for future generations, they contribute to important debates over the future of the economy, the development of people’s skills and sense of community, and the quality of the local environment in both town and country.

The National Trust conducted a survey in which they found that ‘Wildlife is alien to a generation of indoor children’. They found that one in three cannot identify a magpie, one of the UK’s most common and most distinctive birds, while half couldn’t tell the difference between a bee and a wasp.

They also found that just 53% could correctly identify an oak leaf – the national tree and a powerful symbol of England, 29% failed to spot a magpie, despite the numbers soaring three-fold over the past 30 years, only 47% of children correctly identified a barn owl, one in three failed to recognise a Red Admiral; Britain’s best-known butterfly.

When asked to identify fictional creatures, however, children’s abilities suddenly soared with nine out of ten able to correctly name Doctor Who’s enemies, the Daleks, a similar number were able to identify Star Wars’ Jedi Grand Master, Yoda.

The figures are clearly a cause for concern for parents. Asked about their own knowledge of nature, 67% of parents thought they knew more about wildlife when they were youngsters than their children do now, 65% felt that this was partly due to the fact that they spent too little time with their children as a family outdoors.

The survey, carried out across both urban and rural areas across the UK, is part of a major campaign in London to encourage families to spend more time together outdoors.

The Forestry Commission is the government department responsible for the protection and expansion of Britain’s forests and woodlands.

Their mission is to protect and expand Britain’s forests and woodlands and increase their value to society and the environment.

They take the lead, on behalf of all three administrations, in the development and promotion of sustainable forest management. They deliver the distinct forestry policies of England, Scotland and Wales through specific objectives drawn from the country forestry strategies so our mission and values may be different in each.

As you know there are 15 members of the National Parks family in the UK and each one is looked after by its own National Park Authority. They all work together as the Association of National Park Authorities (ANPA).

The UK’s 15 National Parks are part of a global family of over 113,000 protected areas, covering 149 million square kilometres or 6% of the Earth’s surface. We are linked to Europe through the EUROPARC Federation – a network of European protected areas with 360 member organisations in 37 countries.

Each National Park is administered by its own National Park Authority. They are independent bodies funded by central government to:

• conserve and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage; and
• promote opportunities for the understanding and enjoyment of the special qualities of National Parks by the public.
• If there’s a conflict between these two purposes, conservation takes priority. In carrying out these aims, National Park Authorities are also required to seek to foster the economic and social well-being of local communities within the National Park.
• The Broads Authority has a third purpose, protecting the interests of navigation, and under the Broads Act 1988 all three purposes have equal priority.
• The Scottish National Parks’ objectives are to also promote the sustainable use of natural resources, the sustainable economic and social development of local communities and more of a focus on recreation.

Each National Park Authority has a number of unpaid appointed members, selected by the Secretary of State, local councils and parish councils. The role of members is to provide leadership, scrutiny and direction for the National Park Authority.

There are also a number of paid staff who carry out the work necessary to run the National Park.

UK ANPA brings together the 15 National Park Authorities in the UK to raise the profile of the National Parks and to promote joint working. Country associations for the English and Welsh National Parks represent the National Park Authorities to English and Welsh governments.

Positive impacts of rural tourism

Rural tourism has many positive economic, social and environmental impacts if it is managed well and adheres to sustainable tourism principles. I have outlined some of the most commonly noted benefits of rural tourism below:

Employment generation is a common positive economic impact impact of tourism .

Rural tourism can create many jobs in areas where they may otherwise not be many employment opportunities.

These jobs may be directly related to the rural tourism industry, for example hotel workers or taxi drivers.

They may also be indirected related to the rural tourism industry, such as builders (who build the hotels) or staff employed to maintain and keep the area clean.

If more people are employed, there is more opportunity for wider economics benefits. This is because employees will likely pay taxes on their income.

Each destination has its own methods of taxation. But one thing that we can be fairly certain about, is that there will be some money made through taxes on tourism products and services.

The money raised through taxes can then be reinvested into other areas, such as healthcare or education. Tourism therefore has the potential to provide a far-reaching positive economic impact.

Rural tourism enables local people to set up and operate businesses. Rural areas often have less of the known chains and brands (think Costa Coffee, Hilton Hotel etc) and more independent organisations.

Businesses that are owned and managed locally are great because it enables much of the income raised from tourism to stay local and prevents economic leakage in tourism .

Rural tourism will often require the development of new infrastructure and facilities.

This is particular prevalent when it comes to transport networks. Inherently, rural areas are not well connected by public transport. Roads are often narrow and windy, meaning that traffic build up is common, particularly during peak times.

Rural tourism often results in the construction of new transport networks and infrastructure, among other public facilities and services. This is beneficial not only to the tourists who travel here, but also to the local community.

Rural tourism encourages cultural tourism and cultural exchange.

Many people from a range of destinations will travel to rural areas for tourism. This provides opportunities for locals and tourists to get to know each other and to learn more about each other’s cultures.

There are many positive social impacts of tourism . One impact is that rural areas are encouraged to share their traditions and customs with the people who are coming to visit the area.

This encourages the revitalisation and preservation of traditions, customs and crafts.

Because rural tourism usually relies on the environment that is being visited, there are often schemes put in place to protect and conserve areas.

This includes giving an area natural park status or declaring it an area of outstanding natural beauty, for example.

It also includes implementing management processes, such as reducing visitor numbers or condoning off particular areas.

Negative impacts of rural tourism

Whilst rural tourism does have many advantages, there are also disadvantages that must be taken into account. Here are some of the most common examples:

Tourism is often seasonal and comes in peaks and troughs. In the UK, for example, countryside areas are busier on weekends than on weekdays and there are more tourists during the school holidays than there are during term time.

This can place lots of pressure on public services. Hospitals may be overwhelmed during the summer months, when hotel occupancy rates are at their highest. Roads may be gridlocked on bank holiday weekends as city-livers flee to the countryside for some fresh air.

The presence of tourism can result in increases in land and housing prices. This can have a negative effect on the local population.

Some people may feel that they need to relocate because they can no longer afford to live in the area, known as gentrification.

Other people may have a lower quality of life (i.e. have a smaller home, less disposable income) than they would have had if there was no tourism.

As I mentioned before, rural tourism can be subject to overcrowding and congestion. This is particularly prevalent during peak times such as Christmas, the summer holidays and weekends.

Another concern of rural tourism is that there may be too much development in an area. This can impact the appeal of a destination to both tourists and locals.

Some development may not be in keeping with the traditions of the area. If a new theme park is built (because they are often in rural areas), for example, this would likely completely change the area. It would bring with it a different type of tourist and the associated developments (hotels, food outlets etc).

Rural tourism management techniques

In order to maximise the positive impacts of rural tourism and minimise the negative impacts, it is imperative that appropriate management techniques are adopted. Below I have outlined that practices that are seen throughout the world:

Unfortunately, many rural tourism areas are not accessible to all. Enabling wide-scale access is an important part of ensuring that tourism is fair and sustainable.

The equality Act 2010 states that ‘Tourism providers should treat everyone accessing their goods, facilities or services fairly, regardless of their age, gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, gender reassignment, religion or belief, and guard against making assumptions about the characteristics of individuals.’

Here are some great examples of accessibility in rural tourism: – New Forest Access for All – Peak District access for All – Parsley Hay cycle centre

As I mentioned earlier, a lack of transport links to gain access to the destination is a common problem in the rural tourism industry. Organisations can work with local and regional governments to improve local infrastructure. They can also organise their own transport options, such as buses or tours.

In some cases, restrictions to access are necessary in order to ensure that areas are preserved. This is the case, for example, at Stone Henge, where the area is roped-off to prevent tourists from touching the stones.

Similarly, many areas will ask tourists to stick to designated paths or walkways, to prevent damage to the natural environment.

In order to encourage sustainable tourism development , many organisations will invest in training programmes and schemes to up-skill members of the local community.

This is common amongst hotels, facilities and attractions should employ people from the local community.

Training helps to ensure that organisations have more satisfied staff, who are more likely to stay in the position. This keeps costs and turnover of staff down for the company. Happy staff are also likely to work harder and be more productive in their job, which in turn helps the organisation and the overall economy to yield greater economic outcomes.

Example: LandSkills East offer a Bursary to suitably qualified and experienced applicants to help meet the cost of higher level training in management, business and leadership skills. Applicants should be interested in developing their skills in order to steer the future of the land based and rural sector in the East of England and the rest of the UK. Bursary funding covers 50% of the cost of the training activity. This can be from £500 to a maximum of £3000 pounds. This could be to attend conferences, workshops, work placements, research, formal training or post-graduate level qualifications in areas related to the industry. The following industries are eligible for bursary funding: -Agriculture and Livestock -Arable and non Food Crops -Food and Production Horticulture -Viticulture -Environmental Conservation -Food Diversification and Supply Chain -Rural Crafts e.g. timber framing, thatching -Land-based Research and Development

Community-based tourism is often found in rural areas. This is because there is often a close-knit community.

Community tourism fosters the growth of locally owned and managed businesses. It also encourages businesses that are directly involved in the tourism industry (i.e. a hotel) to work with other local businesses (i.e. a local farmer).

Partnerships between local business helps to maximise the economic advantages of rural tourism and minimise economic leakage in tourism .

Areas will have traditional artefacts that demonstrate their history, culture and traditions. These could be from, for example, the Celtic, Romans & religious era’s.

Many of these will be protected or put into museums i.e. The Chiltern Open Air Museum , based in the AONB – The Chilterns.

Places that facilitate the promotion of traditional artefacts such as this are often given charitable status. This means that they can obtain money from sponsorship, funding and membership.

As I have mentioned several times throughout this article, public transport infrastructure is often one of the downsides of rural tourism. Therefore, rural tourism destinations can try to implement various strategies and developments in attempt to improve this.

One such technique is the Green Travel Plan. This is an effective Travel Plan helps to reduce pressure on the local infrastructure, contributes to keeping local pollution to a minimum and enables the widest range of people to have good access to work and services.

Areas can also try to encourage sustainable travel.

Sustainable travel is any form of transport that keeps damage to our environment to a minimum and normally has the added advantage of being a healthier alternative for the user.

Methods of sustainable transport include: walking, cycling, public transport and car sharing, or using vehicles that minimise carbon emissions and other pollutants, such as electric and hybrid cars, and cars which run on cleaner fuels such as LPG.

Some destinations will implement traffic management schemes in order to make their tourism sector more sustainable.

This could be in the form of encouraging destinations to have visitor travel plans in place and to work with businesses and accommodation providers to promote things to enjoy that require reduced travel.

Destinations and public transport operators may aim to develop ‘hubs’ from which there is a concentration of car free options with car parking (e.g. walks, cycle hire, bus and rail services). This would integrate with public transport, accommodation and other visitor experiences.

Others may identify and share best practice in rural public transport that meets the needs of visitors and communities e.g. Smart ticketing; electric bikes; car clubs.

A completely car free rural area and low carbon initiatives will be difficult to implement. This means accepting that some car use is necessary for rural tourism but encouraging more initiatives that increase dwell times at destinations, reduce mileage and length of car journey, such as walks and itineraries that are integrated with public transport and visitor experiences.

It is also important to encourage sustainable transport options when visitors arrive at their destination, for example, encouraging accommodation to link to cycle hire firms, cycle racks, and cycle friendly venues for visitors to bring their own bikes.

There are various sites and properties that are protected against demolition and further building but must be preserved and repaired where necessary.

Footpaths are included in the conservation projects and many destinations have developed footpath networks in attempt to protect the larger area from tramping, littering etc.

Example- Today the Lake District attracts over 12 million visitors per year. This large number of visitors puts the environment under great pressure. It has been estimated that over 10 million people use the National Park’s paths annually. Many Lake District paths have become huge open scars, visible from miles away. Eroded paths are not only unsightly, but unpleasant to walk on and can lead to habitat loss as well as damage to the heritage, archaeological and natural history qualities of the area.

Repairing eroded paths is not the statutory duty of the Highway Authority, or anyone else, as long as they are still ‘open and fit for use’. The National Trust, the LDNPA and English Nature have worked together since the late 1970s to manage the problem.

In 1993 they formed the Lake District Upland Access Management Group (AMG). Their aim was to complete a detailed survey of eroded paths in theLake District. The initial surveys, which focused in particular on the popular central fells, identified 145 paths which were in need of repair.

By 1999, the whole of the National Park had been surveyed and 180 paths had been identified as being in need of repair. The huge scale of the problem highlighted the need for a long term management solution.

This led to the formation of the Upland Path Landscape Restoration Project (UPLRP) a 10 year project (2002 to 2011) which sets out to repair the majority of landscape scars caused by the erosion of fells paths in the Lake District.

This technique involves digging stone into the ground to form good solid footfalls. This ancient technique is used extensively in the central fells using stone which is naturally occurring.

There are many different rural tourism activities that people can take part in and many reasons that a person may be motivated to be a rural tourist.

Motivational reasons may include:

Many people choose to undertake rural tourism because they enjoy traditional pursuits. These may include:

There are also a number of modern pursuits that are packaged and sold as part of a rural tourism holiday. These include:

• Mountain biking
• Quad biking
• Water sports
• Team-building

There are also many special interest holidays that take place in rural areas, such as:

• Heritage tours/activities
• Wildlife spotting/visiting/petting
• Sightseeing
• Canal cruising
• Photography
• Horser riding
• Pony trekking
• Winter sports

Lastly, rural tourism can be the perfect ground for educational opportunities, which may include:

• Geography field trips
• Team building

Rural tourism destinations

In recent years I have taken part in rural tourism activities in a number of countries around the world . Here are some of my favourites:

One of my favourite rural travel destinations is Meteora in Greece.

Meteora is an area of Greece that features extraordinary rock formations. The area is abundant with slender stone pinnacles. Many of these pinnacles house ancient Byzantine monasteries on top.

The area is simply magical! And I’m not the only one who thinks so… this part of Greece has been the setting for a number of films, including one of my favourites- Avatar.

Canada offers the perfect rural tourism holidays!

We did a road trip through the Rockies a couple of years back and absolutely LOVED it! There is so much to do and the scenery is just spectacular.

You can read all about our trip to Canada with a baby here.

Rural tourism is very popular in Sri Lanka.

The main area of appeal are the tea plantations. These areas are rich with history and offer a number of tours where tourists can learn about the history, culture and physical production of tea.

This made for a great addition to our Sri Lanka with a baby itinerary.

Rural tourism in Australia is very popular.

Some people choose to visit the mountain or countryside areas for recreation. Others commit to volunteer tourism projects or undertake working holidays. WWOOFING is also very popular in Australia.

Many people choose to visit the ‘outback’, which offers many rural tourism opportunities. Australia is a popular destination for road trips and it is common for tourists to drive around the country using camper vans or other road transport.

It is evident that rural tourism deserves a place in the tourism industry!

Rural tourism is popular the world over and has the potential to have significant economic impacts in rural areas. As I have explained, careful management is important in order to ensure that the positive impacts are maximised and the negative impacts are minimised- there are a number of different stakeholders that play a role in this.

The rural tourism industry has significant value to the tourism industries and economies of countries around the world. If you would like to learn more about rural tourism, I have suggested some texts below.

• Rural Tourism -This book describes, analyses, celebrates and interrogates the rise of rural tourism in the developed world over the last thirty years, while explaining its need to enter a new, second generation of development if it is to remain sustainable in all senses of that word.
• Rural Tourism and Enterprise: Management, Marketing and Sustainability – This textbook examines key issues affecting rural enterprise and tourism.
• Rural Tourism: An International Perspective – This edited collection questions the contribution tourism can and does make to rural regions.
• Rural Tourism: An Introduction – This text provides a comprehensive, stimulating and up-to-date analysis of the key issues involved in the planning and management of rural tourism.
• Rural Tourism and Recreation: Principles to Practice – This book reviews both the theory and practice of rural tourism and recreation.
• Rural Tourism and Sustainable Business – This book provides the latest conceptual thinking on, and case study exemplification of, rural tourism and sustainable business development from Europe, North America, Australasia, the Middle East and Japan.
• Rural Tourism Development: Localism and Cultural Change – This book links changes at the local, rural community level to broader, more structural considerations of globalization and allows for a deeper, more theoretically sophisticated consideration of the various forces and features of rural tourism development. 

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• Published: 31 March 2023

The benefits of tourism for rural community development

• Yung-Lun Liu 1 ,
• Jui-Te Chiang 2 &
• Pen-Fa Ko 2  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  10 , Article number:  137 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Business and management
• Development studies

While the main benefits of rural tourism have been studied extensively, most of these studies have focused on the development of sustainable rural tourism. The role of tourism contributions to rural community development remains unexplored. Little is known about what tourism contribution dimensions are available for policy-makers and how these dimensions affect rural tourism contributions. Without a clear picture and indication of what benefits rural tourism can provide for rural communities, policy-makers might not invest limited resources in such projects. The objectives of this study are threefold. First, we outline a rural tourism contribution model that policy-makers can use to support tourism-based rural community development. Second, we address several methodological limitations that undermine current sustainability model development and recommend feasible methodological solutions. Third, we propose a six-step theoretical procedure as a guideline for constructing a valid contribution model. We find four primary attributes of rural tourism contributions to rural community development; economic, sociocultural, environmental, and leisure and educational, and 32 subattributes. Ultimately, we confirm that economic benefits are the most significant contribution. Our findings have several practical and methodological implications and could be used as policy-making guidelines for rural community development.

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Introduction.

In many countries, rural areas are less developed than urban areas. They are often perceived as having many problems, such as low productivity, low education, and low income. Other issues include population shifts from rural to urban areas, low economic growth, declining employment opportunities, the loss of farms, impacts on historical and cultural heritage, sharp demographic changes, and low quality of life. These issues indicate that maintaining agricultural activities without change might create deeper social problems in rural regions. Li et al. ( 2019 ) analyzed why some rural areas decline while others do not. They emphasized that it is necessary to improve rural communities’ resilience by developing new tourism activities in response to potential urban demands. In addition, to overcome the inevitability of rural decline, Markey et al. ( 2008 ) pointed out that reversing rural recession requires investment orientation and policy support reform, for example, regarding tourism. Therefore, adopting rural tourism as an alternative development approach has become a preferred strategy in efforts to balance economic, social, cultural, and environmental regeneration.

Why should rural regions devote themselves to tourism-based development? What benefits can rural tourism bring to a rural community, particularly during and after the COVID pandemic? Without a clear picture and answers to these questions, policy-makers might not invest limited resources in such projects. Understanding the contributions of rural tourism to rural community development is critical for helping government and community planners realize whether rural tourism development is beneficial. Policy-makers are aware that reducing rural vulnerability and enhancing rural resilience is a necessary but challenging task; therefore, it is important to consider the equilibrium between rural development and potential negative impacts. For example, economic growth may improve the quality of life and enhance the well-being index. However, it may worsen income inequality, increase the demand for green landscapes, and intensify environmental pollution, and these changes may impede natural preservation in rural regions and make local residents’ lives more stressful. This might lead policy-makers to question whether they should support tourism-based rural development. Thus, the provision of specific information on the contributions of rural tourism is crucial for policy-makers.

Recently, most research has focused on rural sustainable tourism development (Asmelash and Kumar, 2019 ; Polukhina et al., 2021 ), and few studies have considered the contributions of rural tourism. Sustainability refers to the ability of a destination to maintain production over time in the face of long-term constraints and pressures (Altieri et al., 2018 ). In this study, we focus on rural tourism contributions, meaning what rural tourism contributes or does to help produce something or make it better or more successful. More specifically, we focus on rural tourism’s contributions, not its sustainability, as these goals and directions differ. Today, rural tourism has responded to the new demand trends of short-term tourists, directly providing visitors with unique services and opportunities to contact other business channels. The impact on the countryside is multifaceted, but many potential factors have not been explored (Arroyo et al., 2013 ; Tew and Barbieri, 2012 ). For example, the demand for remote nature-based destinations has increased due to the fear of COVID-19 infection, the perceived risk of crowding, and a desire for low tourist density. Juschten and Hössinger ( 2020 ) showed that the impact of COVID-19 led to a surge in demand for natural parks, forests, and rural areas. Vaishar and Šťastná ( 2022 ) demonstrated that the countryside is gaining more domestic tourists due to natural, gastronomic, and local attractions. Thus, they contended that the COVID-19 pandemic created rural tourism opportunities.

Following this change in tourism demand, rural regions are no longer associated merely with agricultural commodity production. Instead, they are seen as fruitful locations for stimulating new socioeconomic activities and mitigating public mental health issues (Kabadayi et al., 2020 ). Despite such new opportunities in rural areas, there is still a lack of research that provides policy-makers with information about tourism development in rural communities (Petrovi’c et al., 2018 ; Vaishar and Šťastná, 2022 ). Although there are many novel benefits that tourism can bring to rural communities, these have not been considered in the rural community development literature. For example, Ram et al. ( 2022 ) showed that the presence of people with mental health issues, such as nonclinical depression, is negatively correlated with domestic tourism, such as rural tourism. Yang et al. ( 2021 ) found that the contribution of rural tourism to employment is significant; they indicated that the proportion of nonagricultural jobs had increased by 99.57%, and tourism in rural communities had become the leading industry at their research site in China, with a value ten times higher than that of agricultural output. Therefore, rural tourism is vital in counteracting public mental health issues and can potentially advance regional resilience, identity, and well-being (López-Sanz et al., 2021 ).

Since the government plays a critical role in rural tourism development, providing valuable insights, perspectives, and recommendations to policy-makers to foster sustainable policies and practices in rural destinations is essential (Liu et al., 2020 ). Despite the variables developed over time to address particular aspects of rural tourism development, there is still a lack of specific variables and an overall measurement framework for understanding the contributions of rural tourism. Therefore, more evidence is needed to understand how rural tourism influences rural communities from various structural perspectives and to prompt policy-makers to accept rural tourism as an effective development policy or strategy for rural community development. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: the section “Literature review” presents the literature review. Our methodology is described in the section “Methodology”, and our results are presented in the section “Results”. Our discussion in the section “Discussion/implications” places our findings in perspective by describing their theoretical and practical implications, and we provide concluding remarks in the section “Conclusion”.

Literature review

The role of rural tourism.

The UNWTO ( 2021 ) defined rural tourism as a type of tourism in which a visitor’s experience is related to a wide range of products generally linked to nature-based activity, agriculture, rural lifestyle/culture, angling, and sightseeing. Rural tourism has been used as a valid developmental strategy in rural areas in many developed and developing countries. This developmental strategy aims to enable a rural community to grow while preserving its traditional culture (Kaptan et al., 2020 ). In rural areas, ongoing encounters and interactions between humans and nature occur, as well as mutual transformations. These phenomena take place across a wide range of practices that are spatially and temporally bound, including agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting, farm tourism, cultural heritage preservation, and country life (Hegarty and Przezbórska, 2005 ). To date, rural tourism in many places has become an important new element of the regional rural economy; it is increasing in importance as both a strategic sector and a way to boost the development of rural regions (Polukhina et al., 2021 ). Urban visitors’ demand for short-term leisure activities has increased because of the COVID-19 pandemic (Slater, 2020 ). Furthermore, as tourists shifted their preferences from exotic to local rural tourism amid COVID-19, Marques et al. ( 2022 ) suggested that this trend is a new opportunity that should be seized, as rural development no longer relies on agriculture alone. Instead, other practices, such as rural tourism, have become opportunities for rural areas. Ironically, urbanization has both caused severe problems in rural areas and stimulated rural tourism development as an alternative means of economic revitalization (Lewis and Delisle, 2004 ). Rural tourism provides many unique events and activities that people who live in urban areas are interested in, such as agricultural festivals, crafts, historical buildings, natural preservation, nostalgia, cuisine, and opportunities for family togetherness and relaxation (Christou, 2020 ; Getz, 2008 ). As rural tourism provides visitors from urban areas with various kinds of psychological, educational, social, esthetic, and physical satisfaction, it has brought unprecedented numbers of tourists to rural communities, stimulated economic growth, improved the viability of these communities, and enhanced their living standards (Nicholson and Pearce, 2001 ). For example, rural tourism practitioners have obtained significant economic effects, including more income, more direct sales, better profit margins, and more opportunities to sell agricultural products or craft items (Everett and Slocum, 2013 ). Local residents can participate in the development of rural tourism, and it does not necessarily depend on external resources. Hence, it provides entrepreneurial opportunities (Lee et al., 2006 ). From an environmental perspective, rural tourism is rooted in a contemporary theoretical shift from cherishing local agricultural resources to restoring the balance between people and ecosystems. Thus, rural land is preserved, natural landscapes are maintained, and green consumerism drives farmers to focus on organic products, green chemistry, and value-added products, such as land ethics (Higham and Ritchie, 2001 ). Therefore, the potential contributions of rural tourism are significant and profound (Marques, 2006 ; Phillip et al., 2010 ). Understanding its contributions to rural community development could encourage greater policy-maker investment and resident support (Yang et al., 2010 ).

Contributions of rural tourism to rural community development

Maintaining active local communities while preventing the depopulation and degradation of rural areas requires a holistic approach and processes that support sustainability. What can rural tourism contribute to rural development? In the literature, rural tourism has been shown to bring benefits such as stimulating economic growth (Oh, 2005 ), strengthening rural and regional economies (Lankford, 1994 ), alleviating poverty (Zhao et al., 2007 ), and improving living standards in local communities (Uysal et al., 2016 ). In addition to these economic contributions, what other elements have not been identified and discussed (Su et al., 2020 )? To answer these questions, additional evidence is a prerequisite. Thus, this study examines the following four aspects. (1) The economic perspective: The clustering of activities offered by rural tourism stimulates cooperation and partnerships between local communities and serves as a vehicle for creating various economic benefits. For example, rural tourism improves employment opportunities and stability, local residents’ income, investment, entrepreneurial opportunities, agricultural production value-added, capital formation, economic resilience, business viability, and local tax revenue (Atun et al., 2019 ; Cheng and Zhang, 2020 ; Choi and Sirakaya, 2006 ; Chong and Balasingam, 2019 ; Cunha et al., 2020 ). (2) The sociocultural perspective: Rural tourism no longer refers solely to the benefits of agricultural production; through economic improvement, it represents a greater diversity of activities. It is important to take advantage of the novel social and cultural alternatives offered by rural tourism, which contribute to the countryside. For example, rural tourism can be a vehicle for introducing farmers to potential new markets through more interactions with consumers and other value chain members. Under such circumstances, the sociocultural benefits of rural tourism are multifaceted. These include improved rural area depopulation prevention (López-Sanz et al., 2021 ), cultural and heritage preservation, and enhanced social stability compared to farms that do not engage in the tourism business (Ma et al., 2021 ; Yang et al., 2021 ). Additional benefits are improved quality of life; revitalization of local crafts, customs, and cultures; restoration of historical buildings and community identities; and increased opportunities for social contact and exchange, which enhance community visibility, pride, and cultural integrity (Kelliher et al., 2018 ; López-Sanz et al., 2021 ; Ryu et al., 2020 ; Silva and Leal, 2015 ). (3) The environmental perspective: Many farms in rural areas have been rendered noncompetitive due to a shortage of labor, poor managerial skills, and a lack of financial support (Coria and Calfucura, 2012 ). Although there can be immense pressure to maintain a farm in a family and to continue using land for agriculture, these problems could cause families to sell or abandon their farms or lands (Tew and Barbieri, 2012 ). In addition, unless new income pours into rural areas, farm owners cannot preserve their land and its natural aspects; thus, they tend to allow their land to become derelict or sell it. In the improved economic conditions after farms diversify into rural tourism, rural communities have more money to provide environmental care for their natural scenic areas, pastoral resources, forests, wetlands, biodiversity, pesticide mitigation, and unique landscapes (Theodori, 2001 ; Vail and Hultkrantz, 2000 ). Ultimately, the entire image of a rural community is affected; the community is imbued with vitality, and farms that participate in rural tourism instill more togetherness among families and rural communities. In this study, the environmental benefits induced by rural tourism led to improved natural environmental conservation, biodiversity, environmental awareness, infrastructure, green chemistry, unspoiled land, and family land (Di and Laura, 2021 ; Lane, 1994 ; Ryu et al., 2020 ; Yang et al., 2021 ). (4) The leisure and educational perspective: Rural tourism is a diverse strategy associated with an ongoing flow of development models that commercialize a wide range of farming practices for residents and visitors. Rural territories often present a rich set of unique resources that, if well managed, allow multiple appealing, authentic, and memorable tourist experiences. Tourists frequently comment that the rural tourism experience positively contrasts with the stress and other negatively perceived conditions of daily urban life. This is reflected in opposing, compelling images of home and a visited rural destination (Kastenholz et al., 2012 ). In other words, tourists’ positive experiences result from the attractions and activities of rural tourism destinations that may be deemed sensorially, symbolically, or socially opposed to urban life (Kastenholz et al. 2018 ). These experiences are associated with the “search for authenticity” in the context of the tension between the nostalgic images of an idealized past and the demands of stressful modern times. Although visitors search for the psychological fulfillment of hedonic, self-actualization, challenge, accomplishment, exploration, and discovery goals, some authors have uncovered the effects of rural tourism in a different context. For example, Otto and Ritchie ( 1996 ) revealed that the quality of a rural tourism service provides a tourist experience in four dimensions—hedonic, peace of mind, involvement, and recognition. Quadri-Felitti and Fiore ( 2013 ) identified the relevant impact of education, particularly esthetics, versus memory on satisfaction in wine tourism. At present, an increasing number of people and families are seeking esthetic places for relaxation and family reunions, particularly amid COVID-19. Rural tourism possesses such functions; it remains a novel phenomenon for visitors who live in urban areas and provides leisure and educational benefits when visitors to a rural site contemplate the landscape or participate in an agricultural process for leisure purposes (WTO, 2020 ). Tourists can obtain leisure and educational benefits, including ecological knowledge, information about green consumerism, leisure and recreational opportunities, health and food security, reduced mental health issues, and nostalgia nurturing (Alford and Jones, 2020 ; Ambelu et al., 2018 ; Christou, 2020 ; Lane, 1994 ; Li et al., 2021 ). These four perspectives possess a potential synergy, and their effects could strengthen the relationship between rural families and rural areas and stimulate new regional resilience. Therefore, rural tourism should be understood as an enabler of rural community development that will eventually attract policy-makers and stakeholders to invest more money in developing or advancing it.

Methodology

The literature on rural tourism provides no generally accepted method for measuring its contributions or sustainability intensity. Although many statistical methods are available, several limitations remain, particularly in terms of the item generation stage and common method bias (CMB). For example, Marzo-Navar et al. ( 2015 ) used the mean and SD values to obtain their items. However, the use of the mean has been criticized because it is susceptible to extreme values or outliers. In addition, they did not examine omitted variables and CMB. Asmelash and Kumar ( 2019 ) used the Delphi method with a mean value for deleting items. Although they asked experts to suggest the inclusion of any missed variables, they did not discuss these results. Moreover, they did not assess CMB. Islam et al. ( 2021 ) used a sixteen-step process to formulate sustainability indicators but did not consider omitted variables, a source of endogeneity bias. They also did not designate a priority for each indicator. Although a methodologically sound systematic review is commonly used, little attention has been given to reporting interexpert reliability when multiple experts are used to making decisions at various points in the screening and data extraction stages (Belur et al., 2021 ). Due to the limitations of the current methods for assessing sustainable tourism development, we aim to provide new methodological insights. Specifically, we suggest a six-stage procedure, as shown in Fig. 1 .

Steps required in developing the model for analysis after obtaining the data.

Many sources of data collection can be used, including literature reviews, inferences about the theoretical definition of the construct, previous theoretical and empirical research on the focal construct, advice from experts in the field, interviews, and focus groups. In this study, the first step was to retrieve data from a critical literature review. The second step was the assessment of omitted variables to produce items that fully captured all essential aspects of the focal construct domain. In this case, researchers must not omit a necessary measure or fail to include all of the critical dimensions of the construct. In addition, the stimuli of CMB, for example, double-barreled items, items containing ambiguous or unfamiliar terms, and items with a complicated syntax, should be simplified and made specific and concise. That is, researchers should delete items contaminated by CMB. The third step was the examination of construct-irrelevant variance to retain the variances relevant to the construct of interest and minimize the extent to which the items tapped concepts outside the focal construct domain. Variances irrelevant to the targeted construct should be deleted. The fourth step was to examine intergroup consistency to ensure that there was no outlier impact underlying the ratings. The fifth step was to examine interexpert reliability to ensure rating conformity. Finally, we prioritized the importance of each variable with the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP), which is a multicriteria decision-making approach. All methods used in this study are expert-based approaches.

Selection of experts

Because this study explores the contributions of rural tourism to rural community development, it involves phenomena in the postdevelopment stage; therefore, a few characteristics are essential for determining the choice of experts. The elements used to identify the experts in this study were (1) the number of experts, (2) expertise, (3) knowledge, (4) diversity, (5) years working in this field, and 5) commitment to participation. Regarding the number of experts, Murphy-Black et al. ( 1998 ) suggested that the more participants there are, the better, as a higher number reduces the effects of expert attrition and rater bias. Taylor-Powell ( 2002 ) pointed out that the number of participants in an expert-based study depends not only on the purpose of the research but also on the diversity of the target population. Okoli and Pawlowski ( 2004 ) recommended a target number of 10–18 experts for such a purpose. Therefore, we recruited a group of 18 experts based on their stated interest in the topic and asked them to comment on our rationale concerning the rating priorities among the items. We asked them to express a degree of agreement or disagreement with each item we provided. We adopted a heterogeneous and anonymous arrangement to ensure that rater bias did not affect this study. The 18 experts had different backgrounds, which might have made it easier for them to reach a consensus objectively. We divided the eighteen experts into three subgroups: (1) at least six top managers from rural tourism businesses, all of whom had been in the rural tourism business for over 10 years; (2) at least six academics who taught subjects related to tourism at three different universities in Taiwan; and (3) at least six government officials involved in rural development issues in Taiwan.

Generating items to represent the construct

Step 1: data collection.

Data collection provides evidence for investigation and reflects the construct of interest. While there is a need to know what rural tourism contributes, previous studies have provided no evidence for policy-makers to establish a rural community strategy; thus, it is essential to use a second source to achieve this aim. We used a literature review for specific topics; the data we used were based on the findings being presented in papers on rural tourism indexed in the SSCI (Social Sciences Citation Index) and SCIE (Science Citation Index Expanded). In this study, we intended to explore the role of rural tourism and its contributions to rural development. Therefore, we explored the secondary literature on the state of the questions of rural development, sustainable development, sustainability indicators, regional resilience, farm tourism, rural tourism, COVID-19, tourist preferences, and ecotourism using terms such as land ethics, ecology, biodiversity, green consumerism, environmentalism, green chemistry, community identity, community integration, community visibility, and development goals in an ad hoc review of previous studies via Google Scholar. Based on the outcomes of this first data collection step, we generated thirty-three subattributes and classified them into four domains.

Step 2: Examine the face validity of omitted variables and CMB

Face validity is defined as assessing whether a measurement scale or questionnaire includes all the necessary items (Dempsey and Dempsey, 1992 ). Based on the first step, we generated data subattributes from our literature review. However, there might have been other valuable attributes or subattributes that were not considered or excluded. Therefore, our purposes for examining face validity were twofold. First, we assessed the omitted variables, defined as the occurrence of crucial aspects or facets that were omitted (Messick, 1995 ). These comprise a threat to construct validity that, if ignored by researchers, might result in unreliable findings. In other words, face validity is used to distinguish whether the researchers have adequately captured the full dimensions of the construct of interest. If not, the evaluation instrument or model is deficient. However, the authors found that most rural tourism studies have not assessed the issue of omitted variables (An and Alarcon, 2020 ; Lin, 2022 ). Second, we mitigated the CMB effect. In a self-report survey, it is necessary to provide a questionnaire without CMB to the targeted respondents, as CMB affects respondent comprehension. Therefore, we assessed item characteristic effects, item context effects, and question response process effects. These three effects are related to the respondents’ understanding, retrieval, mood, affectivity, motivation, judgment, response selection, and response reporting (Podsakoff et al., 2003 ). Specifically, items containing flaws from these three groups in a questionnaire can seriously influence an empirical investigation and potentially result in misleading conclusions. We assessed face validity by asking all the experts to scrutinize the content items that we collected from the literature review and the questionnaire that we drafted. The experts could then add any attribute or subattribute they thought was essential that had been omitted. They could also revise the questionnaire if CMB were embedded. We added the new attributes or subattributes identified by the experts to those collected from the literature review.

Step 3: Examine interexpert consensus for construct-irrelevant variances

After examining face validity, we needed to rule out items irrelevant to the construct of interest; otherwise, the findings would be invalid. We examined the interexpert consensus to achieve this aim. The purpose was to estimate the experts’ ratings of each item. In other words, interexpert consensus assesses the extent to which experts make the same ratings (Kozlowski and Hattrup, 1992 ; Northcote et al., 2008 ). In prior studies, descriptive statistics have often been used to capture the variability among individual characteristics, responses, or contributions to the subject group (Landeta, 2006 ; Roberson et al., 2007 ). Many expert-based studies have applied descriptive statistics to determine consensus and quantify its degree (Paraskevas and Saunders, 2012 ; Stewart et al., 2016 ). Two main groups of descriptive statistics, central tendencies (mode, mean, and median) and level of dispersion (standard deviation, interquartile, and coefficient of variation), are commonly used when determining consensus (Mukherjee et al., 2015 ). Choosing the cutoff point of interexpert consensus was critical because we used it as a yardstick for item retention and its value can also be altered by a number on the Likert scale (Förster and von der Gracht, 2014 ). In the case of a 5-point Likert scale, the coefficient of variation (CV) is used to measure interexpert consensus. Hence, CV ≤ 0.3 indicated high consensus (Zinn et al., 2001 ). In addition, based on the feedback obtained from the expert panel, we used standard deviation (SD) as another measurement to assess the variation in our population. Henning and Jordaan ( 2016 ) indicate that SD ≤ 1 represents a high level of consensus, meaning that it can act as a guideline for cutoff points. In addition, following Vergani et al. ( 2022 ), we used the percentage agreement (% AGR) to examine interexpert consensus. If the responses reached ≧ 70% 4 and 5 in the case of a 5-point Likert scale, it indicated that the item had interexpert consensus; thus, we could retain it. Moreover, to avoid the impact of outliers, we used the median instead of the mean as another measurement. Items had a high consensus if their median value was ≥4.00 (Rice, 2009 ). Considering these points, we adopted % AGR, median, SD, and CV to examine interexpert consensus.

Step 4: Examine intergroup consistency

In this expert-based study, the sample size was small. Any rater bias could have caused inconsistency among the subgroups of experts; therefore, we needed to examine the effect of rater bias on intergroup consistency. When the intergroup ratings showed substantially different distributions, the aggregated data were groundless. Dajani et al. ( 1979 ) remarked that interexpert consensus is meaningless if the consistency of responses in a study is not reached, as it means that any rater bias could distort the median, SD, or CV. Most studies have used one-way ANOVA to determine whether there is a significant difference between the expected and observed frequency in three or more categories. However, this method is based on large sample size and normal distribution. In the case of expert-based studies, the expert sample size is small, and the assessment distribution tends to be skewed. Thus, we used the nonparametric test instead of one-way ANOVA for consistency measurement (Potvin and Roff, 1993 ). We used the Kruskal‒Wallis test (K–W) to test the intergroup consistency among the three subgroups of experts. The purpose of the K–W test is to determine whether there are significant differences among three or more subgroups regarding the ratings of the domains (Huck, 2004 ). The judgment criteria in the K-W test depended on the level of significance, and we set the significance level at p  < 0.05 (Love and Irani, 2004 ), with no significant differences among groups set at p  > 0.05 (Loftus et al., 2000 ; Rice, 2009 ). We used SPSS to conduct the K–W test to assess intergroup consistency in this study.

Step 5: Examine interexpert reliability

Interexpert reliability, on the one hand, is usually defined as the proportion of systematic variance to the total variance in ratings (James et al., 1984 ). On the other hand, interexpert reliability estimation is not concerned with the exact or absolute value of ratings. Rather, it measures the relative ordering or ranking of rated objects. Thus, interexpert reliability estimation concerns the consistency of ratings (Tinsley and Weiss, 1975 ). If an expert-based study did not achieve interexpert reliability, we could not trust its analysis (Singletary, 1994 ). Thus, we examined interexpert reliability in this expert-based study. Many methods are available in the literature for measuring interexpert reliability, but there seems to be little consensus on a standard method. We used Kendall’s W to assess the reliability among the experts for each sample group (Goetz et al., 1994 ) because it was available for any sample size or ordinal number. If W was 1, all the experts were unanimous, and each had assigned the same order to the list of objects or concerns. As Spector et al. ( 2002 ) and Schilling ( 2002 ) suggested, reliabilities well above the recommended value of .70 indicate sufficient internal reliability. In this study, there was a strong consensus when W  > 0.7. W  > 0.5 represented a moderate consensus; and W  < 0.3 indicated weak interexpert agreement (Schmidt et al., 2001 ). To measure Kendall’s W , we used SPSS 23 to assess interexpert reliability.

Step 6: Examine the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process

After examining face validity, interexpert consensus, intergroup consistency, and interexpert reliability, we found that the aggregated items were relevant, authentic, and reliable in relation to the construct of interest. To provide policy-makers with a clear direction regarding which contributions are more or less important, we scored each attribute and subattribute using a multicriteria decision-making technique. Fuzzy AHP is a well-known decision-making tool for modeling unstructured problems. It enables decision-makers to model a complex issue in a hierarchical structure that indicates the relationships between the goal, criteria, and subcriteria on the basis of scores (Park and Yoon, 2011 ). The fuzzy AHP method tolerates vagueness and ambiguity (Mikhailov and Tsvetinov, 2004 ). In other words, fuzzy AHP can capture a human’s appraisal of ambiguity when considering complex, multicriteria decision-making problems (Erensal et al., 2006 ). In this study, we used Power Choice 2.5 software to run fuzzy AHP, determine weights, and develop the impact structure of rural tourism on sustainable rural development.

Face validity

To determine whether we had omitted variables, we asked all 18 experts to scrutinize our list of four attributes and 33 subattributes for omitted variables and determine whether the questionnaire contained any underlying CMB. We explained the meaning of omitted variables, the stimuli of CMB, and the two purposes of examining face validity to all the experts. In their feedback, the eighteen experts added one item as an omitted variable: business viability. The experts suggested no revisions to the questionnaire we had drafted. These results indicated that one omitted variable was revealed and that our prepared questionnaire was clear, straightforward, and understandable. The initially pooled 34 subattributes represented the construct of interest, and all questionnaires used for measurement were defendable in terms of CMB. The biasing effects of method variance did not exist, indicating that the threat of CMB was minor.

Interexpert consensus

In this step, we rejected any items irrelevant to the construct of interest. Consensus measurement played an essential role in aggregating the experts’ judgments. This study measured the AGR, median, SD, and CV. Two items, strategic alliance (AGR = 50%) and carbon neutrality (AGR = 56%) were rated < 70%, and we rejected them accordingly. These results are shown in Table 1 . The AGR, median, SD, and CV values were all greater than the cutoff points, thus indicating that the majority of experts in this study consistently recognized high values and reached a consensus for the rest of the 32 subattributes. Consequently, the four attributes and 32 subattributes remained and were initially identified as determinants for further analysis.

Intergroup consistency and interexpert reliability

In this study, with scores based on a 5-point Likert scale, we conducted the K–W test to assess intergroup differences for each subattribute. Based on the outcomes, the K–W test yielded significant results for all 32 subattributes; all three groups of experts reached consistency at p  > 0.05. This result indicated that no outlier or extreme value underlay the ratings, and therefore, intergroup consistency was reached. Finally, we measured interexpert reliability with Kendall’s W . The economic perspective was W  = 0.73, the sociocultural perspective was W  = 0.71, the environmental perspective was W  = 0.71, and the leisure and educational perspective was W  = 0.72. These four groups of W were all ≧ 0.7, indicating high reliability for the ranking order and convergence judged by all subgroup experts. These results are shown in Table 2 .

The hierarchical framework

The results of this study indicate that rural tourism contributions to rural community development comprise four attributes and thirty-two subattributes. The economic perspective encompasses nine subattributes and is weighted at w  = 0.387. In addition, rural tourism has long been considered a possible means of sociocultural development and regeneration of rural areas, particularly those affected by the decline in traditional rural

activities, agricultural festivals, and historical buildings. According to the desired benefits, the sociocultural perspective encompasses nine subattributes and is weighted at w  = 0.183. Moreover, as rural tourism can develop on farms and locally, its contribution to maintaining and enhancing environmental regeneration and protection is significant. Therefore, an environmental perspective can determine rural tourism’s impact on pursuing environmental objectives. Our results indicate that the environmental perspective encompasses seven subattributes and that its weight is w  = 0.237. Furthermore, the leisure and educational perspective indicates the attractiveness of rural tourism from visitors’ viewpoint and their perception of a destination’s value and contributions. These results show that this perspective encompasses seven subattributes and is weighted at w  = 0.193. This specific contribution model demonstrates a 3-level hierarchical structure, as shown in Fig. 2 . The scores for each criterion could indicate each attribute’s importance and explain the priority order of the groups. Briefly, the critical sequence of each measure in the model at Level 2 is as follows: economic perspective > environmental perspective > leisure and educational perspective > sociocultural perspective. Since scoring and ranking were provided by 18 experts from three different backgrounds and calculated using fuzzy AHP, our rural tourism contribution model is established. It can provide policy-makers with information on the long-term benefits and advantages following the completion of excellent community development in rural areas.

The priority index of each attribute and sub-attribute.

Discussion/Implications

In the era of sustainable rural development, it is vital to consider the role of rural tourism and how research in this area shapes access to knowledge on rural community development. This study provides four findings based on the increasing tendency of policy-makers to use such information to shape their policy-making priorities. It first shows that the demand for rural tourism has soared, particularly during COVID-19. Second, it lists four significant perspectives regarding the specific contributions of rural tourism to rural community development and delineates how these four perspectives affect rural tourism development. Our findings are consistent with those of prior studies. For example, geography has been particularly important in the rural or peripheral tourism literature (Carson, 2018 ). In terms of the local geographical context, two contributions could be made by rural tourism. The first stems from the environmental perspective. When a rural community develops rural tourism, environmental protection awareness is increased, and the responsible utilization of natural resources is promoted. This finding aligns with Lee and Jan ( 2019 ). The second stems from the leisure and educational perspective. The geographical context of a rural community, which provides tourists with geographical uniqueness, advances naturally calming, sensory-rich, and emotion-generating experiences for tourists. These results suggest that rural tourism will likely positively impact tourists’ experience. This finding is consistent with Kastenhoz et al. ( 2020 ). Third, although expert-based approaches have considerable benefits in developing and testing underlying phenomena, evidence derived from interexpert consensus, intergroup consistency, and interexpert reliability has been sparse. This study provides such evidence. Fourth, this research shows that rural tourism makes four main contributions, economic, sociocultural, environmental, leisure, and educational, to rural community development. Our results show four key indicators at Level 2. The economic perspective is strongly regarded as the most important indicator, followed by the environmental perspective, leisure and educational perspective, and sociocultural perspective, which is weighted as the least important. The secondary determinants of contributions have 32 subindicators at Level 3: each was identified and assigned a different weight. These results imply that the attributes or subattributes with high weights have more essential roles in understanding the contributions of rural tourism to rural community development. Policy-makers can use these 32 subindicators to formulate rural tourism development policies or strategies.

This study offers the following five practical implications for policymakers and rural communities:

First, we argue that developing rural tourism within a rural community is an excellent strategy for revitalization and countering the effects of urbanization, depopulation, deforestation, and unemployment.

Second, our analytical results indicate that rural tourism’s postdevelopment contribution is significant from the economic, sociocultural, environmental, leisure, and educational perspectives, which is consistent with Lee and Jan ( 2019 ).

Third, there is an excellent opportunity to build or invest more in rural tourism during COVID-19, not only because of the functions of rural tourism but also because of its timing. Many prior studies have echoed this recommendation. For example, Yang et al. ( 2021 ) defined rural tourism as the leading industry in rural areas, offering an output value ten times higher than that of agriculture in China. In addition, rural tourism has become more attractive to urban tourists amid COVID-19. Vaishar and Šťastná ( 2022 ) suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic created a strong demand for rural tourism, which can mitigate threats to public mental health, such as anxiety, depression, loneliness, isolation, and insomnia. Marques et al. ( 2022 ) showed that tourists’ preference for tourism in rural areas increased substantially during COVID-19.

Fourth, the contributions of this study to policy development are substantial. The more focused rural tourism in rural areas is, the more effective revitalization becomes. This finding highlights the importance of such features in developing rural tourism to enhance rural community development from multiple perspectives. This finding echoes Zawadka et al. ( 2022 ); i.e., policy-makers should develop rural tourism to provide tourists with a safe and relaxed environment and should not ignore the value of this model for rural tourism.

Fifth, our developed model could drive emerging policy issues from a supporting perspective and provide policy-makers with a more comprehensive overview of the development of the rural tourism sector, thus enabling them to create better policies and programs as needed. For example, amid COVID-19, rural tourism created a safe environment for tourists, mainly by reducing their fears of contamination (Dennis et al., 2021 ). This novel contribution that rural tourism destinations can provide to residents and visitors from other places should be considered and built into any rural community development policy.

This study also has the following four methodological implications for researchers:

First, it addresses methodological limitations that still impede tourism sustainability model development. Specifically, we suggest a six-stage procedure as the guideline; it is imperative that rural tourism researchers or model developers follow this procedure. If they do not, their findings tend to be flawed.

Second, to ensure that collected data are without extraneous interference or differences via subgroups of experts, the assessment of intergroup consistency with the K–W test instead of one-way ANOVA is proposed, especially in small samples and distribution-free studies.

Third, providing interexpert reliability evidence within expert-based research is critical; we used Kendall’s W to assess the reliability among experts for each sample group because it applies to any sample size and ordinal number.

Finally, we recommend using fuzzy AHP to establish a model with appropriate indicators for decision-making or selection. This study offers novel methodological insights by estimating a theoretically grounded and empirically validated rural tourism contribution model.

There are two limitations to this study. First, we examine all subattributes by interexpert consensus to delete construct-irrelevant variances that might receive criticism for their lack of statistical rigor. Future studies can use other rigorous methods, such as AD M( j ) or rWG ( j ) , interexpert agreement indices to assess and eliminate construct-irrelevant variances. Second, we recommend maximizing rural tourism contributions to rural community development by using the general population as a sample to identify any differences. More specifically, we recommend using Cronbach’s alpha, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the overall reliability and validity of the data and results. It is also necessary to provide results for goodness-of-fit measures—e.g., the goodness-of-fit index (GFI), adjusted goodness-of-fit index (AGFI), comparative fit index (CFI), normed fit index (NFI), Tucker–Lewis Index (TLI), standardized root mean square residual (SRMR), or root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA).

Numerous empirical studies have illustrated how rural tourism can positively and negatively affect the contexts in rural areas where it is present. This study reveals the positive contributions of rural tourism to rural community development. The findings show that using rural tourism as a revitalization strategy is beneficial to nonurban communities in terms of their economic, sociocultural, environmental, and leisure and educational development. The contribution from the economic perspective is particularly important. These findings suggest that national, regional, and local governments or community developers should make tourism a strategic pillar in their policies for rural development and implement tourism-related development projects to gain 32 benefits, as indicated in Fig. 2 . More importantly, rural tourism was advocated and proved effective for tourists and residents to reduce anxiety, depression, or insomnia during the COVID-19 pandemic. With this emerging contribution, rural tourism is becoming more critical to tourists from urban areas and residents involved in rural community development. With this model, policy-makers should not hesitate to develop or invest more in rural communities to create additional tourism-based activities and facilities. As they could simultaneously advance rural community development and public mental health, policy-makers should include these activities among their regional resilience considerations and treat them as enablers of sustainable rural development. We conclude that amid COVID-19, developing rural tourism is an excellent strategy for promoting rural community development and an excellent alternative that could counteract the negative impacts of urbanization and provide stakeholders with more positive interests. The proposed rural tourism contribution model also suggests an unfolding research plan.

Data availability

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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We declare all authors involved in the work. The division of labor is stated as follows; Conceptualization: J-TC; Supervision: J-TC; Methodology: Y-LL; Investigation: Y-LL; Data collection, analysis, and curation: J-TC, Y-LL, P-FK; Original draft preparation: J-TC, Y-LL; Review: P-FK; Interpretation and editing: P-FK; Validation: J-TC, Y-LL, P-FK.

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Liu, YL., Chiang, JT. & Ko, PF. The benefits of tourism for rural community development. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 10 , 137 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01610-4

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Tourism and Rural Development

• All Regions
• 29 Sep 2020

Tourism’s many benefits must be felt outside of urban areas for the sector to fulfil its potential to provide opportunities for all: That was the key message of World Tourism Day 2020 as UNWTO united the global community around the theme of “Tourism and Rural Development”.

Around the world, tourism is a lifeline for rural communities, providing jobs, supporting rural businesses and protecting natural and cultural heritage. World Tourism Day 2020 emphasized the role the sector will play in helping rural areas recover from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and build for the future.

Messages promoting the day were shared by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, His Holiness Pope Francis , UNWTO’s network of Ambassadors, including Spanish football star Iker Casillas, heads of Government including Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, and UN agencies and international organizations, from UNESCO and ITC to the OECD and IATA.

‘A lifeline for rural communities’

Tourism has proven to be a lifeline for many rural communities, but its true force still needs to be fully deployed

UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili said: “Tourism has proven to be a lifeline for many rural communities, but its true force still needs to be fully deployed . This World Tourism Day highlighted our sector’s unique ability to reach those who would otherwise be left behind, providing opportunities for all, transforming lives and protecting the cultural heritage that makes us human.”

The celebration was hosted by the MERCOSUR nations (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile as associate member), the first time in the 40-year-history of history of the international day of observance that hosting duties have been shared.

Ministers show shared commitment

Germán Cardoso, Minister of Tourism for Uruguay, highlighted rural tourism’s importance for helping countries diversify their markets, noting it offers “sensitive and emotional experiences” for visitors alongside its benefits for the communities themselves. The Minister of Tourism for Argentina Matías Lammen noted that “tourism in South America is regional…whoever visits us usually visits more than one country”, making a joined-up approach to building a “greener future” essential. Marcelo Alvaro Antonio, Minister of Tourism for Brazil, singled out the importance of innovation and investment and the “power of ecotourism and adventure tourism”. For Paraguay, Minister Sofía Elizabeth Montiel de Afara, reaffirmed her government’s “commitment to the Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, and its emphasis on working with local communities. The Under-Secretary of Tourism for Chile, José Luis Uriarte, similarly pledged to use tourism to “support rural communities suffering from the economic and social repercussions of this pandemic.”

Taking part in the round-table discussion that followed were Mario Alberto González Sanchez, Director of Mexican Secretariat of Tourism, and the Chilean chef and UNWTO Special Ambassador, Pilar Rodriguez. Joining them were Lisandro Menu-Marque, Director at Globalia, and Shannon Stowell, CEO of the Professional Adventure Travel Association and the Adventure Travel Fund of the USA.

UNWTO: Guiding recovery and rewarding innovation

UNWTO used the occasion of World Tourism Day to launch its new Recommendations on Tourism and Rural Development . The new publication outlines the key steps destinations can take to fully harness the potential of tourism to help drive social and economic recovery outside of urban areas.

Recognising the important role new ideas and technology will play in this, UNWTO also announced the winners of its Rural Tourism Innovation Competition. Organized with the Government of Spain, Google Spain and the Federation of Rural Women’s Associations (FADEMUR). The competition attracted more than 130 applications from across Spain. Almost half of applications (43%) were put forward by women. My Street Book won the prize in the Innovation category, and the winner of the prize for the start-up with the biggest social impact was Van Woow .

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• World Tourism Day 2020
• Recommendations on Tourism and Rural Development
• World Tourism Day: UNWTO Secretary-General Official Message
• World Tourism Day: UN Secretary-General Official Message

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Rural tourism is considered a high potential form of tourism, enhanced by the demand for more sustainable and nature-based solutions, and able to contribute to territory resilience. A rural area is not necessarily a tourist destination, but it might become one, if agricultural enterprises are willing to diversify their economic activities by investing in rural tourism, and local actors provide active support and co-participation.

1. Introduction

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Agritourism

• 1 Understand
• 2.1.1 Dude ranches
• 2.2 Wineries
• 3.1 Weddings and honeymoons
• 3.2 Hayrides
• 3.3 Horseback riding
• 3.4 Corn mazes
• 4.1 Milk and cheese
• 4.2 Vegetable gardens
• 4.3 Grain production
• 4.4 Orchards
• 4.5 Ground fruits
• 4.6 Maple sugar
• 5.1 Alpaca or llama
• 5.3 Poultry
• 5.4 Goats and sheep
• 5.5 Fish farms and aquaculture
• 5.6 Farm sanctuary
• 5.7 Falconry
• 6.1 Agricultural shows
• 6.2 Farm stands
• 6.3 Farmer's markets
• 6.4 Pick it yourself farm
• 7.1 North America
• 7.2.1 Austria
• 7.2.2 Belarus
• 7.2.3 Belgium
• 7.2.4 Bulgaria
• 7.2.5 Cyprus
• 7.2.6 Denmark
• 7.2.7 Estonia
• 7.2.8 Finland
• 7.2.9 France
• 7.2.10 Germany
• 7.2.11 Iceland
• 7.2.12 Ireland
• 7.2.13 Italy
• 7.2.14 Latvia
• 7.2.15 Lithuania
• 7.2.16 The Netherlands
• 7.2.17 Portugal / Madeira
• 7.2.18 Romania
• 7.2.19 Spain
• 7.2.20 Sweden
• 7.2.21 Turkey
• 7.2.22 United Kingdom
• 7.3 South America
• 7.5 Oceania
• 8 Stay safe

Agritourism means travel organized around farming, small-scale food production or animal husbandry. Visiting a working farm or ranch for the purpose of enjoyment and education are key parts of this often rural experience. Farmer's markets, wine tourism , cider houses and corn mazes all constitute examples of agritourism. Travelers who participate in this type of vacation frequently desire to see how food is grown and prepared or to learn how animals are raised.

Understand [ edit ]

Sometimes spelled "agrotourism," agritourism is the idea of bringing urban residents to rural areas for leisure travel and spending.

In an increasingly mechanized world, many people have lost touch with how their food is produced, or the region where it originated. Agritourism offers tourists a chance to reconnect with the land, providing a "hands on experience" with local foods. Agritourism activities include picking fruits, tasting wine, tending bees, milking cows and other educational pursuits.

Agritourism immerses visitors in the heritage of a particular culture. Take the time to stop by a working farm or ranch, you will most likely discover people with an intimate knowledge of the history and traditions of their region. A traveler to Agros in Cyprus who helps the villagers gather roses in May, will learn something about the area's history producing rose water. Horseback riding on a dude ranch in Montana offers a glimpse into the lives of cowboys from the "Old West" of the U.S. . A visit to a food museum such as the Musee de la Boulangerie Rurale in Luberon can teach about the history of rural breadmaking in the Provence region of France .

For the most iconic agritourism areas, safeguarding the integrity of their products is nothing less than a source of national pride. In the European Union , Protected Designation of Origins (PDOs) look after the integrity of a wide variety of foods, such as Champagne wine in France, Asiago cheese in Italy and Melton Mowbray meat pies in England . All these regions are eponymous with the foods they produce, while a tourism industry has sprung up around that particular food's production.

Like sustainable travel , agritourism focuses on travel that is low-impact and empowering to local communities, both socially and economically. Recognizing the need to diversify their farm products and supplement their agricultural incomes, many farmers consider agritourism as a viable option for the long-term sustainability of their farms. Agritourism can prop up an agricultural economy when local producers can no longer compete economically. The tourism takes place in a farm setting and is secondary to the primary agricultural operation.

Overnight stays [ edit ]

This can be as sophisticated as a bed and breakfast stay at a winery or as rustic as camping . One common variation is a farm stay, where guests help feed the animals and harvest the crops.

Farms [ edit ]

In Europe , it's referred to as "schlaf im Stroh" in German , "aventure sur la paille" in French , or "sleeping in the hay" in English. Spend the night on a farm and help out with domestic chores and demonstrations of native crafts. This could be an overnight stay in a rustic hayloft in Switzerland , a remote cabin or outbuilding in Austria , or even a full-blown apartment and rooms for daily or weekly rent on a farm in France. Here are a few resources:

• FarmStayPlanet — A directory of farmstay vacation providers worldwide, though with the vast majority in Europe. Some vineyards and ranch stays too.
• World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) — A chance for a farmstay combined with social activism and ecological practices.
• Help Exchange — Organization that connects holiday backpackers to farms, ranches and stables in exchange for labor. Travellers agree to a few hours of work for lodging. It is a sometimes rural version of a hospitality exchange .
• Hungarian Farmhouses — "Village Tourism" is popular and very well developed in Hungary , and can be a remarkable experience. Start your research with 1Hungary , National Federation of Rural and Agrotourism [dead link] and Centre of Rural Tourism .
• Kibbutz Program Center — Nonprofit work studies program for young adults between 18 and 30 to work on a kibbutz farm in Israel .

Not every farm visit is work related or educational. A common variation is an "entertainment farm." These rural amusement parks offer barrel rides, haunted houses, inflatable bounce and jumps, crop art, displays of old farm equipment and other forms of recreation.

Dude ranches [ edit ]

Dude ranches, or guest ranches, are resorts patterned after a ranch in the Western U.S., featuring camping, cattle wrangling, horseback riding, and other outdoor activities. See also Old West .

• Dude Rancher's Association — Created in 1926, the DRA is the governing body of the U.S. West’s dude ranch industry.

Wineries [ edit ]

Winery stays are popular on every continent save Antarctica. Given the romance, history and cachet of wine, many view vineyard retreats as a "high-end" agritourism experience.

Recreation [ edit ]

Weddings and honeymoons [ edit ]

Many farmers and ranchers are supplementing their income by offering wedding and event venues. Rehearsal dinners, barbeques and other activities can combine with the wedding ceremony. If there is an inn or bed and breakfast on the premises, newlywed couples can make a rural experience a part of their honeymoon travel .

Hayrides [ edit ]

A ride in a wagon, flat bed trailer or truck piled high with loose straw or bales of hay. A traditional autumn, harvest time activity in North America .

Horseback riding [ edit ]

Includes rodeos, horse farms and trail riding, the latter often directed by professional guides or outfitters.

• Hungarian Equestrian Tourism Association [dead link] — Countryside tourism in Hungary , as viewed from the back of a horse.
• British Horse Society — Charity in the United Kingdom with a large number of resources for equine tourism around the globe.

Corn mazes [ edit ]

A labyrinth or hedgerow made out of a corn/maize field, or some other kind of tall growing grain. There are two main methods for creating a corn maze: growing it from the ground up using special seeding techniques plotted out from a GPS-linked grid map, or to cut the maze pattern through a regular field of corn.

• Maize Maze Association of United Kingdom and Ireland

Food production [ edit ]

Milk and cheese [ edit ]

Visit a place where milk, cream and other dairy products are processed and sold.

Vegetable gardens [ edit ]

They are "Schrebergartens" in Germany, "dachas" in Russia , or vegetable garden plots and simple country homes where city dwellers plunge their hands into the soil on the weekends. It's possible to rent these allotment gardens in many countries as an alternative stay to a hotel or youth hostel. There is no central directory or database for finding allotment garden lodging; the information must be ferreted out of the various national and regional agritourism bureau websites.

• Ruralis — A consortium of rural and agritourism boards in Istria , Croatia . The Roman Emperors used to reward their legionaries with "latifundia", or little stone farm houses and garden plots. You can still stay in a handful along the Dalmatian Coast.

Heritage Gardens — Legacy or heritage gardens preserve the biodiversity of heirloom vegetables that may have fallen out of favor.

• Medicinal Plants and Vegetable Gardens — List of herb garden and vegetable garden museums in Wallonia , Belgium from the Belgium Tourism Office.

Grain production [ edit ]

• Society for the Preservation of Old Mills — With the colorful acronym of SPOOM, this organization offers visitor information on historic watermills, stone windmills and grist mills throughout the U.S.
• Native Seeds — In an effort to preserve agricultural genetic diversity, this nonprofit group seeks out rare heirloom seeds adapted to the arid climate of the Southwestern U.S. and Northwestern Mexico . The group needs volunteers to help out on their conservation farm near Patagonia , Arizona . Tasks include weeding, repairing equipment, planting and harvesting.

Orchards [ edit ]

• Trat — This Thai province is famous for its array of seasonal fruits such as durian, mangosteen, rambutan, Long Kong, santol and zalacca, which are available right from the orchard.
• Sukhothai Cycling Route Through the Orchards — Also in Thailand . Enjoy cycling around and tasting a variety of fruits like pomelo, santol, sapodilla, coconut, star fruit, various kinds of bananas, as well as the tasty and fleshy plum mango ( Bouae Macrophylla ) with its chicken-egged size.

Ground fruits [ edit ]

• Malang — In East Java , Indonesia . See tea, orange, apple, strawberry, vegetables in Lawang and Batu highlands
• Kanchanaburi — In Thailand . Province features seedless raisin vineyards, as well as a mixed cultivation farm with organic vegetables and plants of various kinds of processed agricultural products such as corn milk, vegetable juice, dehydrated banana and jack-fruit.

Maple sugar [ edit ]

Celebrated in places like New England and Eastern Canada . In Quebec , February marks the maple syrup festivities in the sugar shacks, as the maple trees awaken from the winter cold and prepare for the forthcoming springtime. These "cabanes à sucre" often feature restaurants serving maple syrup-inspired cuisine.

Coffee [ edit ]

Coffee makes mornings possible, and coffee plantations on sun-drenched mountains grow the beans that make your morning cup possible. Traditional coffee plantations often offer tours or tastings.

• Costa Rica has several coffee plantations offering tours and tastings. In the Central Valley (near San Jose are Cafe Britt (with a 1-1/2 tour and a 6-hour tour) and Hacienda Alsatia (Starbucks). In the Central Pacific (Costa Rica) region, near Monteverde, Don Juan offers several tours daily that also feature chocolate and sugar cane in addition to coffee. In Guanacaste , the Tío Leo Coffee Tour is offered from 8am - 11am.
• Jamaica is famous for its Blue Mountain coffee, grown in a small area at an altitude of 3,000 - 5,5500 feet. The Craighton Estate in Irish Town St Andrew offers tours and tastings.
• Mexico has three main coffee growing regions in the states of Veracruz , Chiapas , and Oaxaca . Coffee plantations with tours in Oaxaca include Pluma Hidalgo , Finca Copalita , Finca el Pacifica , Finca La Gloria , and Finca las Nieves . In Chiapas, Finca Hamburgo offers coffee tours and tastings, they also have rooms for overnight guests. Finca Argovia also offers tours, tastings, and overnight accomodations. Finca Irlanda stresses sustainable practices with eco-friendly growing practices. That's not necessarily unique though. Mexican coffees are almost always certified-organic and appeal to a knowledgable, eco-friendly buyer. In Veracruz (state) , coffee growing centers on the town of Coatepec , which is famous for its Mexican Altura coffee. Several local fincas offer coffee tours and tastings.

Wine [ edit ]

Wine is the most sophisticated beverage (according to wine-drinkers!), and winemaking has thousands of years of tradition around the Mediterranean Sea.

Animal husbandry [ edit ]

Alpaca or llama [ edit ]

These pack animals from South America are now raised around the world. Many farms offer tours and sell clothing made from the animal’s lightweight, insulating wool.

Horses [ edit ]

Poultry [ edit ], goats and sheep [ edit ], fish farms and aquaculture [ edit ], farm sanctuary [ edit ], falconry [ edit ], markets and festivals [ edit ], agricultural shows [ edit ].

An agricultural show is a public event exhibiting the equipment, animals, sports and recreation associated with agriculture and animal husbandry . The largest comprise a livestock show (a judged event or display in which breeding stock is exhibited), a trade fair, competitions, and entertainment. The work and practices of farmers, animal fanciers, cowboys and zoologists may be displayed. The terms agricultural show and livestock show are synonymous with the North American term county fair or state fair .

Agricultural shows are an important part of cultural life in small country towns, and popular events in larger towns and cities. Shows range from small events in small country towns usually lasting two days, through medium-sized events of three days, to large Royal Shows, which may run for up to two weeks and combine elements of an amusement park with those of an agricultural show. Although increasingly under pressure due to finances and insurance concerns, all main towns in the United Kingdom have a Show Society and in some areas, several towns and villages in the area all have an annual show. Larger shows often include live entertainment and fireworks in the main arena.

Farm stands [ edit ]

Farmer's markets [ edit ].

• National Farmers' Retail & Markets Association (FARMA) — A co-operative of farmers, producers selling on a local scale, and farmers markets in the United Kingdom. Info on farmers' markets, farm shops, or pick your own farms in the U.K.

Pick it yourself farm [ edit ]

Destinations [ edit ]

North america [ edit ].

• Alberta Department of Agriculture and Rural Development [dead link]

British Columbia

• British Columbia Agritourism Alliance
• Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives
• Agrotourisme Québec

United States of America

Europe [ edit ]

The European Federation of Rural Tourism

South America [ edit ]

• Brazil - Associação Brasileira de Turismo Rural [dead link]

Asia [ edit ]

• Agritourism India .

Oceania [ edit ]

• Australia - www.agritours.com , www.caloundraaccommodation.com
• New Zealand - www.ruraltours.co.nz

Stay safe [ edit ]

During a visit to a working farm or ranch, you will most likely encounter farm equipment and animals. Supervise your children around both and encourage them to use some restraint. Any visit to a rural area may include mud and manure, so wear boots or old sneakers. Beware of pests .

See also [ edit ]

• Alcoholic beverages
• Animal ethics
• Fruits and vegetables
• Legacy food markets
• Nordic folk culture
• Open air museums
• Rodeo (event)

• Has custom banner
• Articles with dead external links
• Articles with Wikipedia links related to but different to article
• Topic articles
• Outline topics
• Outline articles

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Home > Books > Sustainability Assessment at the 21st century

Rural Tourism and Territorial Development in Italy

Submitted: 18 December 2018 Reviewed: 11 March 2019 Published: 30 July 2019

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.85774

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This chapter analyses the development of rural tourism in Italy over the recent decades. Since the end of the twentieth century, also due to the crisis of industrialization and the exhaustion of the factory work model, interest in “returning to the countryside” has grown. The spreading of new social and cultural trends, more sensitive to the issues of sustainability and preservation of natural wealth, has encouraged in Italy, the country of art and the beautiful landscape, a sudden increase in new tourism initiatives that are environmental friendly and revolving around quality food and wine. The “Roads of flavours” and numerous associations of small towns have therefore been created, to enhance the Italian artistic and architectural heritage. In particular, interest in Mediterranean diet has increased, as shown by the growth in tourism linked to oil. There is no lack of compatibility problems as well as difficulties in devising new cohabitation formulas, but as this work demonstrates, after the boom of the “sun and beach” tourism of the 1960s, today a far more diversified tourist panorama has emerged, thus allowing the rural world to benefit from a renewed momentum.

• development

Author Information

Manuel vaquero piñeiro.

• Department of Political Science, University of Perugia, Italy

Paola de Salvo *

Francesca giommi.

*Address all correspondence to: [email protected]

1. Introduction

Since the ending of the twentieth century, rural Europe has been at the core of a deep social change, which saw the countryside to evolve from a simple “production landscape” into a “consumer landscape” [ 1 ]. With the spreading of the service economy, the countryside turned into a mainly residential and recreational place [ 2 ]. It therefore increased its attractiveness by becoming more accessible and more useful, thus providing rurality with a new role within the broader social context. This change is derived from a plurality of social as well as cultural processes, such as the growing mobility and integration among goods, services, people and knowledge from different territorial areas, including rural and urban areas [ 3 ], together with a healthier life style associated with a new concept of well-being. Under these circumstances, agriculture gained new significance, by becoming a priority of rural development [ 4 ]. During the last decade, indeed, numerous studies emphasized the relation of agriculture with the environment, with other economic sectors, and with society as well. As pointed out, this approach resulted from a change in the economic and social meaning of the primary productive activities, which attributed to agriculture a different and wider role than in past times.

In this framework, consecutive Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reforms progressively broadened the rationale of the rural development policies, from the simple support to the fostering of its development through the promotion of the agricultural policies, a better care and financial aid aimed at both qualifying and preserving the environment and the rural space, the improvement of the life quality, as well as a growing diversification of the rural economy. When, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, we talk about “the revenge of the countryside” [ 5 ] and of the economic value inherent in the rediscovery of the identity of the places [ 6 ], the concept of rural development was linked to the new role attributed to agriculture in relation to the environment, to the territory, and to food safety and quality. If in the second half of the last century announcing the end of peasants, erased by industrialization and the growth of the cities [ 7 ], nowadays a new scenario of rurality is emerging, so-called the postindustrial or postmodern rurality, where agricultural development requires policies based on the territory and oriented toward general development. With the progressive establishment of a multifunctional agriculture, coherent with the guidelines of the Economic Community policy [ 8 , 9 ], which is able to play different roles in addition to the traditional primary one linked to the production of food and raw materials, and the growing diversification of economic activities within the rural areas, the modern agriculture has played a different role in respect to the past, having to respond to the renewed needs of the current society in terms of food safety, environmental protection, recreational needs, and, in general, the improvement of the quality of life [ 10 ]. The general objective of this work is the analysis of the relationship among local food, rural territory and tourism. Specifically, we will investigate on how tourism linked to the enhancement of food can contribute to the development of activities related to its production, linking it to new forms of tourist experience, helping to preserve and disseminate the rural culture of a territory.

As registered by the World Tourism Organization (WTO), tourism connected to food and countryside is a quickly growing segment. A high percentage of tourists does choose tourist destination on the basis of food as well as of the will to gain positive experiences by tasting local products in small locations, renowned for their quality and their strong connection to the territory. In this way, a strong relationship has been created among free time, tourism, food rediscovery, and rural areas’ promotion, able to exert an influence on both demand and supply of tourist services.

Local traditional products, in Italy, represent a decisive component of the endogenous development of territorial systems (Food Clusters, Metropolitan Food Clusters), due to the significant economic, social, and tourist repercussions they can produce [ 11 ]. Thanks to typicality promotion, the productive function of the agricultural activities is integrated with new and diversified functions, among them are the environmental and territorial safeguard, the preservation of culture and rural traditions, and the creation of spaces and locations interested in new economic and social dynamics [ 12 ]. During the last years, it has been possible to observe a proliferation of initiatives aimed at matching the agricultural production with services (touristic, recreational, educational, social, and other services), also in order to intercept and satisfy new consumer segments interested in the fruition of agricultural products in the territory of their production, so to “plunge” within the local culture and to live consumer experiences as opportunities of cultural and social enrichment.

All the same, local public administrations look at rural as well as gastronomic tourism with renewed interest, also in the light of a strengthening of both local community identity and cohesion, by fostering synergies and links with other territorial economic activities (handicraft, tourism, etc.) so to favor a local endogenous development. The special focus we put, with this study, on the gastronomic products has also been encouraged and supported by the growing public care for food quality, other than by the will of promoting as well as preserving local traditions and by a more general sharing of a simpler and more natural life style. It is after all of universal acknowledgement that traditional products, as forms of expression of a territorial culture, strongly affect the social and economic development of rural territories.

2. Toward a new vision of rural development: the relationship between local gastronomy and tourism

By borrowing the definition from the World Food Travel Association, “ food tourism is the act of traveling for a taste of place in order to get a sense of place. ” The development of gastronomic tourism has prompted the interest of the scientific community that has begun to describe and theorize about this new social phenomenon. The research was recently directed to consider the culinary tourism as a new emerging tourist practice, showing a clear and steady increase in travel-oriented food [ 13 , 14 ].

The scientific literature initially highlighted how local food could become a new tourist attraction [ 15 ] and how new tourist expectations could be created around it [ 16 ]. The study of gastronomic tourism has led some authors [ 17 , 18 ] to highlight some important aspects for its development and its affirmation, identifying four categories that refer to structures, activities, events, and organizations [ 19 ]. Regarding the structures, the authors mainly refer to buildings (wineries, olive groves, farms, museums, taverns, etc.), land use (vineyards and olive groves), and to the itineraries (wine and olive oil roads, etc.). With reference to the activities, gastronomic tourism is linked to the methods of consumption of the product (tastings, pick your own activities, etc.) and to the experiences of education in the knowledge of food (cooking schools, visits to the places of production, etc.). As regarding the events, which are the third category identified by the authors, we can identify fairs, parties, and events linked to food. Finally, as regards the organizations, we refer to the presence of certification systems and the structures of the product and adherence to civil society associations that enhance the connection of food to the territory (Slow Food, National Identity Associations such as City of olive oil, City of wine, of pasta, of hazels, etc.).

In the last 20 years, food positioning in the tourism sector has changed profoundly and geographical destinations have recognized their gastronomic potential as an important attraction factor and as a new opportunity to position themselves in an even more increasing competitive global market. The interest in typical products and local food has thus acquired an ever-increasing importance among tourist motivations [ 20 ], thanks not only to the renewed attention to gastronomy that characterizes today’s society, but also to the affirmation of a tourist offer of experience complex, based on gastronomic resources capable of involving and stimulating the sensorial and experiential component of tourism consumption. A gastronomic tourism is affirmed that is a movement of tourists who, while moving, buy and consume local food, observe and participate in the process of food production and consider it as the main motivation to move or at least as one of the most important activities that characterize the journey [ 17 ]. About 59% of Italian tourists consider the important or very important the presence of an enogastronomic offer and thematic experiences.

The evolution of the relationship between gastronomy and tourism has, however, been characterized by some important steps that have changed the interest and the involvement of tourists with respect to local food. Richards [ 20 ] in deepening the relationship between gastronomy and tourism highlights what he defines the three generations of the development of this relationship. The first attempts to bring tourism and gastronomy closer together, which is what Richards calls the first generation of this relationship, were exclusively linked to the development of tourism-related experiences by producers for consumers [ 21 ]. In this phase, tourists approach the places and other cultures through food and begin to assert what will be called gastronomic tourism [ 22 ]. This first and simple approach is overcome when food begins to be considered as a possible tourist attractor to enhance and promote within the territorial tourism development strategies. If food had always been an important element for tourism, tourists have always needed to eat, now becomes one of the main reasons for visiting destinations, and food becomes a tourist experience to be practiced. These changes reinforce what is referred to as the second generation of the relationship between gastronomy and tourism, and it is in this new framework that the first activities of co-creation of gastronomic experiences have been established for a decade and consumers/tourists acquire an important role proving to know the food and local productions as much as the producers themselves.

The greater awareness acquired by consumers in the processes of creating tourist experiences linked to the local gastronomy is legitimized by the birth of the foodies [ 23 , 24 ], figures that will be decisive for the development of gastronomic tourism. Barr and Levy [ 23 ] are the first to use the term foodies and in their text “The Official Foodie Handbooks” define them as:

“ a person who is very very very interested in food. Foodies are the ones talking about food, in any gathering over restaurants, recipes, radicchio … They don’t think they are being trivial-foodies consider food to be an art, on a level with painting or drama. ”

In recent years, gastronomy played a central role in determining travelers’ expectations and motivations. Food and local culinary specialties can be currently seen as real touristic attractions and able to move a food travelers’ target or“ foodies ” [ 25 ]. In this way gastronomy, as well as representing a pleasant sensory activity, does evolve into both an attraction factor and a tourist marketing tool for destinations [ 26 ]. Food, in other words, become the unifying point between territorial authenticity and a tourist ever more interested in genuine, inclusive proposals, strictly linked to the territory he is going to visit. This association is even more valid for countries such as Italy, where the combination of agriculture, agri-food products, and preservation of the historical landscape is strong. In the Mediterranean countries (Italy, Greece, and Spain), the food and gastronomic landscapes play a fundamental role in the image construction.

The affirmation of the figure of the foodie , which is something more than a simple gastronomic tourist because his interest in food is part of his daily lifestyle and is not just linked to the trip [ 27 ], has certainly contributed to the affirmation of not only new tourist destinations, but also of restaurants, bars, taverns, and typical places. The growing ties between food and travel become evident also thanks to the spread of not only tourist guides and specialized publications, but also of specially dedicated websites. The growing number of foodies is leading to adaptation of destinations to their requests and needs. Tourist destinations become foodscape or places that enhance and create spaces dedicated to meeting the needs of food lovers. The foodies are attracted by foodscape not only to eat and taste local food but also to stay and visit the chosen destination [ 20 ] that becomes a gateway for the local identity of knowledge and approaches tourists and residents leading them to experience a common cultural experience. It creates a unique link between food, landscapes and cultures, stimulating an active participation of consumers in the activities of producers: tourists buy typical food products in local markets, participate in cooking classes, which use local products, choose restaurants with greater frequency, inns, and local establishments, thus determining a direct contact between those who create and those who consume food-related experiences.

Finally, the third and current generation is that linked to the enhancement of the landscapes of food, and the relationship between gastronomy and tourism is increasingly linked to the dynamics of local development and the revaluation of the landscape as an expression of all its elements, including the course of the food, the growth, and the development of foodscape that demonstrates this evolution. This creates spaces and places that are affected by new economic, social and tourist dynamics that satisfy new segments of consumers/tourists interested in the use and consumption of local food in the territories of production in order to “immerse themselves” in the culture of the places and to live the consumption, as cultural-enrichment opportunities, and social experiences. The foodscape becomes more and more a sensorial landscape, a unicum of flavors and aromas, which helps to stimulate research and the choice of a particular place to visit and which becomes an element that mainly directs the choice of the tourist [ 14 , 28 ].

2.1 The role of local productions for the development of rural tourism

Local productions are part of the culture of a rural territory; they are elements of the past, expression of the traditions of a place that contribute, as argued by Dallen and Boyd [ 29 ], to a dynamic conservation of the landscape. Local products, also expression of human actions, become a product of the territory and even more an element of attractiveness and of tourist interest ( Figure 1 ).

The regional distribution of Italy’s typical products. Source : our elaboration from www.politicheagricole.it .

In the twenty-first century, scientific innovation and globalization have intensified the interest in food, offering a wide variety of food products, encouraging the emergence of alternative food movements, supporting a new food culture that has also enhanced the success of a gastronomic tourism. In this historical moment, food is the subject of discourses and reflections of critical and interpretive positions and is an expression of values, problems, and priorities of today’s society. It has already been underlined how the discourses around food concern food safety, health, the ethical treatment of animals, the industrial impact, food production, the development of alternative food strategies, the symbolic dimension of food practices, and the socioeconomic potential that they have for local communities. So, there are numerous discourses that can be built around food: it is normally the consumerist discourse that characterizes the reflections on food, because its consumption is fundamental for life, but in the global context, we are witnessing the affirmation of new tensions and comparisons that lead to new paradigms that enhance the ethical and social aspects of food choices and promote local foods. Portman [ 30 ] argues that the defense of local food triggers discourses and new interests that rest on the awareness that food choices today no longer respond exclusively to economic indications, but increasingly reflect precise political and moral choices oriented to the issues of quality and sustainability. In fact, a new model of development has been affirmed within which local food is associated with numerous benefits, among which the increase farm incomes, greater social vitality, territorial regeneration activities, the enhancement and protection of traditional activities, and also the development and promotion of a gastronomic tourism that enhances the link between food and territory and between local cuisine and culture from which it originates [ 31 ]. In recent years, scientific literature has shown that local food, also considered a cultural and social capital [ 32 , 33 ], can contribute not only to socioeconomic well-being of rural areas [ 34 , 35 ] but also to their tourism development [ 20 , 36 , 37 ].

The value of food not only goes well beyond being a simple means of livelihood but can also contribute to the improvement of the tourist experience. The consumption of local food offers in fact a number of sensorial tourism experiences that link the local gastronomy to the journey and the discovery of the places [ 38 ]. Promotion of typical products through the creation of territorial as well as collective brands, hinged on the memory of places and communities, is able to trigger endogenous, integrated, and sustainable rural development paths. Therefore, both the promotion of traditional products and the development of a gastronomic tourism may represent precious opportunities in contrasting the current economic crisis. Especially in the less favored and marginal rural areas, far from the modernization process, a self-centered rural development model can make a root, characterized by the use and reproduction of experiences and knowledge locally developed to convert local resources into quality agri-food products while able, at the same time, to preserve the local elements, which are its foundation.

Within the frame of this new model, typical products become a resource capable of adding value to the development of smaller areas because they are able to integrate and enhance different territorial resources [ 34 , 35 ], therefore responding to changes in the style of consumption of postmodern tourists. How to promote different territorial resources depends on the actors involved and on the strategies they decide to pursue. Traditional products, therefore, represent a potential resource for the local community and around them revolve several inclusive dynamics as well as projects of collective development. Typicality does not exclusively rest on the features of the productive process, but also on relations among the actors of the territorial system, which provide the typical product with a collective dimension. The collective nature of typical products, together with their ability to promote territorial identity, quality and culture, is bringing about the shaping of new social networks and able to steer the choices regarding local development in a direction more sensitive to issues such as the development sustainability, the communities’ quality life, and the enhancement of the territorial identities [ 39 ].

2.2 Tasting of typical products: the food trail

Other than for art, Italy is worldwide identified as the country where you eat and drink well. Words as “pizza,” “pasta,” “espresso,” and “cappuccino” have conferred to food a universal dimension, thus becoming brands of a gastronomic globalization. Italy is actually one among the countries where the food and wine offer is wider and more diversified. With its 863 appellations ( Figure 2 )—299 IG food (35%), 526 IG wine geographical indications (61%), and 38 IG spirits (4%)—Italy comes before France (764) and Spain (358). The most important years in the creation of geographical indications of origin go from 1996 to 2012. Distributed by regions, agri-food IGs predominate in Emilia Romagna (45), Veneto (38), and Lombardy (36), while wine appellations prevail in Piedmont (59) and Tuscany (58). Furthermore, in Italy, there are 172,688 restaurants of which are 586 of excellence, 11,632 farms with restaurants, 18,632 farms with accommodation, 170 wine routes and flavors, and 99 museums of taste (reports on gastronomic tourism, data from 2016 to 2017) ( Figure 3 ).

Geographical indications of Italy’s food (2019). Source : our elaboration from www.qualigeo.eu/statistiche-eu-dop-igp-stg/ .

Trend geographical indications of Italy’s wine and food (1974-2017). Source : our elaboration from www.qualigeo.eu/statistiche-eu-dop-igp-stg/ .

These few numbers help to understand the articulation of the gastronomic tourism economic background, which merges together countryside and city, family kitchen and starred cuisine, large markets and small shops, private companies, and public policies. In the first year of life, the Fabbrica Italiana Contadina (FICO), the large thematic area inaugurated in Bologna, had 1 million visitors, and the turnover was 50 million euros. Another Italian event related to food and that attracts hundreds of people is the Vinitaly organized every year in Verona. In the last editions dedicated to showcase Italian and world wine, there were more than 200,000 visitors, demonstrating the economic and media force of great food-related events in contemporary society [ 40 ].

Special attention deserves the routes of wine, oil, pasta and flavors because they are networks spread all over the Italian peninsula by involving a large number of small municipalities. The routes of flavors are a tool, which offers to a vast part of the Italian peninsula the opportunity of an evolution oriented toward both the upgrading and the development of the territory. This process is important to promote the development of less economically advanced areas, such as mountain areas currently experiencing a loss of population as well as of economic activities. In these areas, in fact, most of the typical products are produced (3200 local productions come from the Italian mountain areas), they in these territories, less favored and tendentially excluded from modernization processes, become a resource capable of giving value to their development by integrating and enhancing the different territorial resources. Moreover, it is unanimously recognized that typical products, as a form of expression of the culture of a territory, greatly influence the social and economic development of local rural territories, in particular through the achievement of the following socioeconomic benefits: the increase in income from agricultural enterprises, greater social vivacity, a territorial regeneration, through the valorization and conservation of traditional activities, and finally also the development of a food and wine tourism that can contribute to improving the economic sustainability of these territories.

On the backdrop of a global redefinition of economic balances, the routes of typical products—much of them located also in marginal territories and mountains areas—operate at different levels, including the promotion of tourist systems and thematic routes that are able to bring back vitality to marginalized areas faraway from major routes and rail links. Geographical marginality can, therefore, become a useful resource, and the routes represent an efficient tool of its promotion and image communication. They include a very articulate set of initiatives, which involves a wide number of public and private actors variously participating a network, which is going to become, thought in a way not always systematically integrated, the engine of new forms of local development among shapes, structures, and geographies of a constantly changing territory.

The innovative dimension of the roads’ governance is based upon the necessity of building strategic alliances, which demand territories to establish new relations reshaped according to common interests and objectives, and it can now operate through a multitude of instruments of various kinds, such as strategic plans and programs, projects of territorial, urban, environmental and tourism marketing, integrated projects, etc. These tools represent an innovative approach for the governance of territorial development and transformation processes in terms of environmental and socioeconomic sustainability, not last thanks to the use of adequate information systems, the formation of consent, and the participatory construction of decision-making processes.

A route of typical products originates from the will and the union of the strengths of numerous subjects, linked together by an effort of engagement and networking led within the frame of a territory. It is possible to identify its main components by analyzing the product (wine, oil, pasta, cheese, rice, etc.), the territory (countryside, burgs), the ecosystem (landscape and environment quality enhancement), and the key players: producers, tour operators, associations, and institutions.

The routes, therefore, represent an example of public-private collaboration that aims at channeling, through thematic routes, various subjects of a specific territory, which compose a supply chain around a typical product, thus integrating the product knowledge and tasting as well as the tourist use of territory in a coherent meta-market. In fact, the establishment of the routes determines the implementation of a tourism development strategy especially addressed to more fragile territories, such as the rural areas, where the main tourist attraction is the presence of an intangible heritage that must be enhanced through experiential, sustainable, and quality development models.

More specifically, the Italian legislator has enacted a specific national law for the wine routes whose aims, however, can be extended to other typical products such as oil, cheese, etc. The roads of wine are indeed governed by the law of the 27th July 1999, n. 268, where, in Article 1, they are defined: “(…) paths marked and advertised with appropriate signs, along which gather natural, cultural and environmental values, vineyards and cellars of single or associated farms open to the public; they represent an instrument through which the territories and the relative productions can be disseminated, commercialized, and enjoyed in form of tourist offer.” Main goal of the law is to promote territories with a wine vocation, with particular reference to places with high-quality productions. National legislation highlights how a route can be considered as an integrated system of both territorial and tourism offers organized along a route characterized by places of historical, artistic and environmental interest, flanked at the same time by a series of structures of reception, promotion and marketing of local products. Definition in art.1 of the 1999 national law reflects an approach consistent with the new multifunctionality of the rural world. This regulatory intervention provides the necessary prerequisites in order to increase the competitiveness of the territorial systems and to contribute to the formation of the roads themselves, by aiming at creating effective networks characterized by a bottom-up approach, which require active partnership as well as planning skills on the part of the public and private operators belonging to both the chain of typical products and the tourism sector ( Figure 4 ).

Wine routes in Italy (2019). Source : our elaboration.

Wine tourism turnover in Italy ranges between 2.5 and 3.5 billion euros as a result of a tourist movement involving about 4 million people. A prime example of transformations connected to the gastronomic development is the small Tuscan town of Montalcino where, between 2011 and 2016, tourist arrivals related to wine increased by 125% (from 5000 to 24,000), thus favoring a multiplication of hotel facilities (from 14 to 50) and beds (from 78 to 620). Montalcino, which takes advantage of the excellent international image enjoyed by Tuscany, is not a lonely example of growth. Among other areas in Italy that in recent years have experienced a radical change in their image are Conegliano (Veneto), Oltrepò Pavese (Piedmont), the Langhe (Piedmont), and Montefalco (Umbria). These places are a clear demonstration of changes that have taken place in Italian tourism over the last decades when, under the effects of the industrialization crisis and of the growing criticism about the massive construction of the coasts, the tourism model moved from a mass “sun and beach” tourist offer toward a more diversified idea of how to enjoy a free time. In the light of this new tourist demand, related to the attractiveness of the campaign and of the consumption of typical products, producers also were induced to adapt their structures from simple places of production into suitable structures for tourist accommodation.

Some figures can help to clarify. In Italy, there are today more than 1200 cellars equipped to receive tourists and the cellars that can be visited are over 12,000. During individual visits and wine tours, they offer tastings, visits to the vineyards, and other recreational and educational activities. Estimating the economic impact of food and beverage tourism is, at best, very difficult. In an approximate way, knowing that this industry is characterized by a particular type of tourists—the food travelers—which escapes easy definitions and estimates suggest that the wine tourists who visit the cellars bring about a 31.35% increase in turnover, an increase that should be distributed through the entire tourist supply chain (hotels, restaurants). These percentages recall those of the WFTA, according to which approximately 25% of visitor spending can be attributed to food and drink while traveling. This change took place almost naturally in extra-European countries such as Australia or New Zealand, where the wine tourism sector grew together with viniculture, while in Italy and in the European countries in general, the transformation of wineries in tourist destinations has induced a business change in order to adapt buildings and rural settings to visiting activities. A change was also required in terms of offering the visitor the image of a sustainable production, attentive to the preservation of nature and to the application of the most modern technologies for recycling and saving energy. In this sense, wine tourism at the beginning of the twenty-first century is a perfect example of contemporary society trends.

3. Landscapes and cultural heritage, a case study: the olive oil tourism in Italy

Olive tree is the most typical Mediterranean plant and olive oil, other than the symbol of a millenary culture, and is considered since the twentieth century as a fundamental food for the health of people (Mediterranean diet). Moreover, olive tree and oil are two clear examples of environmental and social sustainability. Given this cultural value, in recent years, following the wine model, tourism too has begun to look with interest at the attractiveness of the olive-covered landscapes as well as to the possibility to be acquainted with the olive oil production techniques. A specific tourist offer has, therefore, been created, which is strongly linked to both the territory and the history of the Mediterranean countries.

There are numerous studies that highlight a relationship between tourism and olive oil; initially the international literature, in particular in Australia, has highlighted how oil tourism is essentially an expression of the wider phenomenon of rural tourism [ 40 , 41 ]. Furthermore, the study of tourism related to olive oil has been investigated in Europe, especially in Italy and Spain [ 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 ] where the researches have not only enhanced the rural aspect but also highlighted how the interest in olive oil can give value to the tourist image of a destination becoming a new narrative of the territory that underlines the link between landscapes, culture, typical products, and tourism [ 46 ]. Oil tourism does not just become a further expression of the activities linked to rural tourism and to the agri-tourism, but also to cultural tourism and for its organoleptic qualities, that of health [ 47 ]. The results of the first studies on oil tourism conducted by Ruiz Guerra [ 47 ] show how initially, the interest of tourists in the olive oil industry was linked above all to the sale of products connected to it, which then activated new forms of economy for the territory, as had already happened for wine tourism [ 48 , 49 ]. However, the researches that highlight the interest of tourists increase not only for oil production, but also for production sites and landscapes [ 40 ]. Furthermore, oil tourism refers not only to representational images and to visual perceptions of places, but also to a perception relative to the other senses. In fact, the results of a recent research [ 39 ] highlight how tourists show a particular interest in visiting the mills that become a new resource for tourism development linked to the world of olive oil.

The implants for the production of oil, as well as being the places that are characterized by the proposal of emotional content and sense making , constitute a concrete case to be placed in the broader concept of heritage cultural [ 50 ]. In fact, oil mills are to be considered a testimony to the time of the oil production processes. As a result of the standardization imposed by industrialization, oil mills handed down the specificity of the individual territories, for example, thinking to the high historical value of the mills in the grottoes existing in the Italian region of Puglia. The historical oil mills can thus constitute fundamental architectures for the enhancement of the territory, because they allow the visitor to get closer to realities that bear witness to the knowledge and the productive know-how of a community, the relations with the territory where they insist, contributing with their presence and activities to an economic and social enrichment.

With this in mind, buildings that still retain particular architectural values must be protected and enhanced through initiatives that support the agricultural production of services (tourism, recreational, educational, and social). New forms of use of the mills are established in which tourism activity is taking a leading role, as demonstrated by the results of the research that will be presented in the following paragraphs. Olive oil tourism is certainly a recent phenomenon of tourism; it is a matter of following in the footsteps of wine tourism that has managed to place the cellars (new and old) at the center of public attention, attracted now by the valuable historical buildings now from the shapes created by modern architects [ 51 , 52 ]. For olive oil tourism, the experience of wine tourism should offer points of comparison to exploit the mill in that building and not only as a working space. Next to the conventional museums (Olive oil Museums), the mills have the characteristics to transform themselves into real museums aimed at describing to the public all aspects related to the production of oil, fundamental aspect that distinguishes the needs of the new tourist related not only to the dimension of seeing but also of learning and knowledge. One could speak of a museum with a high didactic impact where to combine the value of olive oil with the weight of history and tradition.

In this new context, the dynamics of tourism, linked to the characteristics of the tourist experience, also applies to the tourism of the olive oil and to the possible and manifold offers that the tourist system connects to it. The activities that may be linked to the development of olive oil tourism involve several subjects, primarily tourists who have the opportunity to know the territory through a typical product and the tourist experiences connected to it, the producers that can enhance their business with a new way of marketing their product, and finally the tourism system that has the opportunity to redevelop and characterize its offer with specially prepared tourist itineraries with the involvement of the hospitality and catering sectors. Although a part of the literature [ 43 ] argues that the tourist itineraries linked to oil do not have a great development, in Italy, there are many experiences of territories that have activated paths of knowledge of the oil, made by both producers and institutions, which present oil as a qualifying element of the territorial offer. For example, the regional route of the POD Umbrian olive oil, whose characteristics will be presented later, qualifies as a possibility of knowledge, promotion, marketing, and enhancement of the oil throughout the territory involved in the itinerary.

The road of typical products thus becomes an instrument for the promotion and diffusion of local culture and traditions linked to oil [ 53 ]. In Italy, these roads are highly specialized and concern single local productions, wine, oil, cheese, apples, etc. But in some territories, a different orientation is starting to prevail, perceptible by the same road names, more generally defined roads of flavors, where the degree of specialization decreases, highlighting territorial experiences of itineraries that include wine, olive oil and other quality agri-food products. The presence of tourist itineraries on the olive oil is certainly one of the important tools of promotion and local valorization, along the routes the tourist has the opportunity not only to meet points of direct sale of the oil, to make visits to the mills, to taste the oil of olive, but also to observe the landscape in which the itinerary develops. In this context, olive oil tourism can help to activate development processes aimed at reconstructing the local cultural identity understood as the identification, protection, and enhancement of all the factors that contribute to creating the specificity and uniqueness of the places and the environment. There are tourists who seek and ask more and more landscape, more and more nature, and desire a deep and direct contact with the values of rural culture; the heritage inherited from the past becomes an element of interest and also of tourist interest. The olive oil, the rediscovery of the values ​​and traditions linked to it, therefore represents the possibility of development of the territories, especially those of a rural nature, and can become the fulcrum around which to propose and/or redesign cultural tourism offers [ 54 , 55 ]. Olive oil in some territorial contexts is a heritage in which a community identifies itself and makes the place in which it presents unique and can develop around itself interesting experiential tourist practices that contribute to making the tourist feel, even if temporarily, part of the history of a place. Olive oil tourism can also offer interesting answers to the question of authenticity that characterizes important and growing segments of tourist demand [ 56 ], proposing tourist experiences that trigger a knowledge and a comparison between the tourist and the identity of the territory.

In this framework, the University of Perugia carried out a specific research devoted to this innovative tourism custom by relating it with a significant initiative aimed at the promotion of olive oil, named Frantoi Aperti (Opens Oil mills), which takes place in Umbria. This research, titled “Oil tourism as a tool for enhancing the action of rural territories: the case of the PDO Umbria Oil Road”represents in Italy the first attempt of reflection and study on the theme of olive oil tourism. The main objective of the research was to understand how innovative initiatives to promote the territory as Frantoi Aperti (Opens Oil mills) can identify in the oil product a possible driver able to promote the development of tourist flows related to the environment, the culture and the discovery of rural areas. With reference to the methodology adopted, the research activity has contemplated the administration of a questionnaire to tourists present during the six weekends of the 2013 edition of Frantoi Aperti . There were collected 228 questionnaires aimed at understanding the profile of the tourist who participates in Frantoi Aperti investigating the reasons for his visit. The investigation and survey activities were carried out in the municipalities participating at the event “Frantoi Aperti” in 2013, which involved 30 mills with guided tours to the oil plants in processing, to the new oil tasting, and to other regional products and activities.

The exploratory survey was carried out on a sample that is not statistically representative, however, able to elaborate interesting elements of reflection about the links among territory, oil and consumption styles that could be analyzed in order to provide useful information to administrators and operators of the territory and able not only to increase but also to enhance and “spread” the quality of the initiative and therefore also its tourist visibility. The administered questionnaire provided for four different thematic sections includes: profile of the interviewed tourist; permanence and hospitality: in the second area, it is represented by the duration of the visit and the type of accommodation chosen; the motivation that pushes the tourist to participate in the Frantoi Aperti event and its level of satisfaction regarding the organization and reception and hospitality of the territory; and styles of consumption and oil product: the last section of the questionnaire was dedicated to the behavior and daily habits of food consumption of the tourist.

Furthermore, the research activity has provided the creation of in-depth interviews to a representation of privileged stakeholders of the territory (local authorities, entrepreneurs, producers, bloggers, etc.) in order to understand the motivations that led them to join “the Frantoi Aperti,” the advantages and opportunities of their participation as well as their contribution to the realization of the event. The stakeholders interviewed highlighted how the increase in visibility and knowledge of both the territory and its companies is the main reason behind the adhesion to “Frantoi Aperti” on the part of local authorities, producers, and owners of accommodation facilities, who evaluate positively the initiative and consider it a possible instrument, which could contribute to the promotion and de-seasonalization of the territories involved.

This research allows to observe that a specific profile of the olive oil tourist begins to take shape: the empirical survey emphasizes as this new figure considers the interest in the oil product in itself as one of the main travel motivations and as a tourist experience to be practiced. The olive oil tourist is also interested in the knowledge of food landscape in which the relationship between gastronomy and tourism is linked to the enhancement of the landscape as an expression of all its identifying elements including food. The food and culture of the territory connected to it thus form an ideal harmony for tourists who express their interest not only for the gastronomic product itself, but also for all the aspects that characterize the landscape, its history, and its traditions [ 20 ]. Attention to food is increasingly characterized by sociocultural, political, and economic elements that are contributing to the affirmation of the concept of food of the territory, foodscape, not only as a vehicle of tradition and memory but also as a food landscape, which represents not only the complexity of production, but also of the conservation and enhancement of local productions [ 50 ]. In conclusion, olive oil tourism can contribute to the local development of rural territories with the networking of local resources and skills, through a participatory project that activates sustainable processes of value creation not only for tourists but also for the local community.

4. Conclusions

This study demonstrates the significance assumed over the last decades by the world revolving around food. Food highlights how feeding choices, in the current society, not only derived from economic conditions, but also that reflect political and social choices, are oriented by themes such as quality, authenticity, as well as sustainability. Relationship between food and territory has developed very quickly, and this new food culture has also enhanced the emergence of gastronomic tourism. Territories are today very aware of the significance of their gastronomic potential, primarily based on tourism: tourists prefer to buy and consume local food while at the same time observing and participating in its production process, by increasingly considering it as the main reason for moving or, at least, as one of the most important activities that characterize their trip.

A new tourist demand has emerged, which identifies in the typical product an element capable of combining the authenticity and specificity of a territory with its knowledge and the experience of its tasting. The tasting of the gastronomy and the knowledge of the production processes of local agri-food typicality has started indeed being considered tourist practices that allow travelers to get in touch with a heritage consisting in local history, typicality, lifestyles, and traditions.

From this work, we also derive important considerations regarding the relationship among food, rural areas, and tourism: promotion of local food can contribute to rural area development and socioeconomic well-being also through the growth of a gastronomic tourism hinged on the link with the territory, on local cuisine, as well as on the culture from which it originates.

Furthermore, this chapter stresses the value of resources and tourist services, which are developing around local products, especially promotion and knowledge paths such as the roads of wine, oil and flavors, as well as the installation of dedicated museums and the organization of festivals and events. Italian territories are increasingly characterized as foodscape, and the relationship between gastronomy and tourism is increasingly tied to the dynamics of local development as well as to the enhancement of landscape as an expression of all its identity elements, including food.

Food and culture of the territory connected to it thus form an ideal harmony for tourists and for the inhabitants who express their interest not only for the gastronomic product itself, but also for all the aspects that characterize the landscape, its history, and the cultural base. The attention to food is increasingly characterized by sociocultural, political, and economic elements that are contributing to the affirmation of the concept of food districts, as a vehicle not only of tradition and memory but also of agricultural landscapes that represent not only the complexity of production, but also the conservation and enhancement of local productions, especially in rural areas. The protection of local food production can thus contribute to the socioeconomic development of rural territories by networking the resources and skills present in them, through strategic actions that activate sustainable processes of value creation not only for tourists but also for of the local community.

Food and culture of a territory represent an ideal balance for both its tourists and inhabitants who are interested not only in the gastronomic product itself, but also in its relation with landscape, including landscape history and cultural heritage. Attention for food is increasingly marked by sociocultural, political as well as economic elements, all contributing to designing the new concept of “food districts,” meant as a vehicle of tradition and memory. Especially, these new trends emphasized the significance of agricultural landscapes able to convey the idea of the complexity of the production process, along with those of preservation and enhancement of local productions, especially in rural areas. Safeguarding local food production can thus contribute to the socioeconomic development of rural territories by networking their resources and skills through the implementation of strategic actions able to activate sustainable value chain interesting not only for tourists but also for the local community.

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Also check out these popular off-beat tours in India, places to experience tribal India, and farm stays in India.

Kutch Adventures India: Community Tourism in Kutch

Kutch Adventures India offers journeys into Gujarat's Great Rann of Kutch to visit artisan villages, as well as the region's famous salt desert. You'll get to watch the artisans in action, as well as experience and get an insight into village life. Stay in mud huts (with attached western bathrooms) or tents at Hodka's village resort, the Shaam-e-Sarhad (Sunset at the Border). It's owned and operated by the Village Tourism Committee of the people of Hodka village. Or, sleep out on a charpoy (traditional woven bed) in a village under the stars.

Itmenaan Lodges Punjabiyat: Farming in Rural Punjab

Less than two hours from Amritsar and the Golden Temple, Itmenaan Lodges has four stylish boutique cottages nestled into the verdant fields. They've been made in traditional-style by local craftsmen entirely out of mud. Guests can get involved in various farming activities (including milking of cows), go on a tractor ride, go cycling, visit a Sikh temple and experience religious ceremonies, walk around the village and meet the villagers, or simple relax and enjoy the serenity.

Ecosphere Spiti: High Altitude Rural Tourism

The Spiti Valley in Himachal Pradesh is a lesser-known alternative to Leh and Ladakh. Visits to Buddhist monasteries, yak safaris, treks to villages, village homestays, and cultural performances are some of the possible activities. Ecosphere Spiti, an award winning non-profit organization focused on conservation and responsible tourism, is highly involved in the community there and can make all travel arrangements. They also offer volunteer travel packages, involving a range of community initiatives.

Tora Eco Resort & Life Experience Center: Sundarbans Village Life

The Sundarbans in West Bengal is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that's notable for being the largest mangrove jungle in the world. About 35% of the Sundarbans lies in India, and this part of it is made up of 102 islands, just over half of which are inhabited. Village life there is challenging. There's no mains water supply, electricity, roads, or cars. People live in homes built from mud and straw, and are constantly wary of attack from tigers. Tora Eco Resort on Bali Island is a unique community-operated tourism project, with six ethnic cottages surrounded by paddy fields. Guests can go on village walks and participate in village activities, as well as explore the narrow canals of the Sundarbans by country boat (similar to a large canoe).

Chhotaram Prajapat's Homestay: Village Life Near Jodhpur

Bishnoi village, about 40 minutes south of Jodhpur , provides an authentic experience of rural Rajasthan. The fascinating Bishnoi people revere nature and live in harmony with it, so much so that they bury their dead (instead of burn them like other Hindus) to preserve trees as wood is used in cremation. Chhotaram Prajapat's Homestay has become quite renowned since it was established in 2009. There, you'll get to stay in traditional yet contemporary dwellings (with western style facilities) with a family of weavers. Outstanding Rajasthani hospitality is provided, along with delicious home-cooked food. Activities include folk dances, camel safaris, village trekking, attending an opium ceremony, and jeep safaris to Bishnoi village .

Goat Village: Goats and Mountain Views in Uttarakhand

Part way up the trekking route (about 20 minutes) to Nag Tibba, Goat Village has 10 attractive earthen Garhwali cottages with mountain views to die for. It was set up to help provide a livelihood for locals to stop them from leaving the area, and enables travelers to experience the local way of life. Organic farming and agriculture are carried out on the property -- including the breeding of goats. You'll get to feast on local delicacies prepared with freshly grown ingredients and completely detox from the rest of the world. Only go there if you value quietness. The Goat Village also has other properties in Uttarakhand.

Chandoori Sai Guesthouse: Stay in a Pottery Village in Odisha

Sharell Cook.

Boutique Chandoori Sai Guesthouse in Goudaguda pottery village, in Odisha's far south Koraput district, is a remarkable labor of love for its Australia owner, Leon. He conceptualized and built the guesthouse himself with the help of the local potters whom he recruited to make the terracotta floor tiles, roof tiles, and ornamental urns. Many of the tribal village women are also employed to help run the property. Guests can explore the village at leisure, visit the potters' colony (firing in the traditional-style kiln takes place on weekends) and learn pottery, go on nature walks in the surrounding hills, spend time with the tribal women (they will sing and dance beautifully if asked), watch food being prepared and learn some cooking tips. A local guide from the village leads village-to-village hikes, and there are many fascinating tribal markets held in the area. You can even walk with the village women to the market!

The 4tables Project: An Experiential Art Village in Himachal Pradesh

If you're into art, you're likely to find Gunehar village in the Kangra Valley of Himachal Pradesh interesting. German-Indian art impresario Frank Schlichtmann founded a project there to transform the nondescript village into a thriving art hub. The village now has an art gallery, an ecological boutique guesthouse in a restored 70 year-old house, a camping site in the fields, and fusion restaurant. Innovative art events are held as well. The villagers are mostly Gaddis and Bara Bhangalis, who are semi-nomadic sheep herders. You can stay in the middle of the village and learn about their lifestyle, as well as go on walks and treks, and visit local temples. Gunehar is very close to Bir-Billing, a popular paragliding destination, about five hours drive from Chandigarh airport. 

Lakshman Sagar: Luxury Rural Tourism in Rajasthan

Spectacular Lakshman Sagar was once a royal hunting lodge and is perched on a ridge in the Pali district of Rajasthan. Its design has been inspired by the culture of the region. The Mardana (men's) tower has been converted into a breezy dining space with a kitchen below it, while a swimming pool has been cut into the rock plateau behind the Zanana (women's) tower. Day beds, sheltered by thatching of dry vegetation, line one side of the lake. And, 12 chic mud and stone guest cottages are spread out over the 32-acre landscape. Numerous activities are offered to give guests an insight into the surrounding rural area. These include breakfast at a villager's home among the fields, horse safaris, village visits, exploring old forts, nature walks, and visits to local industry such as chilli drying and wholesaling, and making of bricks by hand.

Overlander India: Rural Drives Through Rajasthan

Get to know Rajasthan's rural communities by going deep off-road with Overlander. You'll be accompanied by host Uday, who hales from a local noble family that's been part of the region since the 16th century. They've been working with the local villagers to help improve their lives and have a respectful relationship with them. Their signature trips is a full or half rural drive south of Jodhpur along a dry riverbed to meet various village communities, with an option to spend the night glamping in the wilderness. You'll get to interact with the villagers, taste their cuisine, witness their ceremonies, and see abundant wildlife. Overlander conducts desert expeditions as well.

Bhoramdeo Jungle Retreat: A Rural Homestay in the Heart of India

Nestled in the Maikal Hills, three hours from Raipur in northwestern Chattisgarh, this beautiful rural homestay provides the perfect base to explore the region. Host Satyendra "Sunny" Upadhyay will take you to visit the local Baiga and Gond tribal villages. Other attractions in the area are the 7th-11th century Bhoramdeo temple complex, markets, forest treks, cycling, and abundant wildlife and birds. There are five guest rooms, plus a separate cottage with kitchen on the property. They're decorated with local artifacts and murals by a local Gond painter. Delicious village-style local cuisine is served.

Kila Dalijoda: Royal Heritage in Rural Odisha

Sharell Cook

This former royal hunting lodge turned eco-friendly heritage homestay offers an exceptional variety of personalized local experiences in otherwise inaccessible rural Odisha. Literally located in the middle of nowhere, the erstwhile king's great grandson and his wife rescued the mansion from abandonment and squatters, and are living an enviably harmonious self-sufficient lifestyle there. The host is well integrated into local village communities and conducts outstanding guided tours that give guests the opportunity to interact with local tribes and tribal artists. You can try the potent tribal alcoholic rice brew, visit an old age home for cows, cycle on rural roads without any traffic, enjoy nature walks and treks, spend time boating and spotting birds at the wetland. Plus, there are many farming activities to participate in at the property such as feeding and milking the cows, feeding the geese, cutting hay (in season), and silk worm farming. Guests can also learn about sustainable living by visiting the property's bio gas plant, fish pond, and organic vegetable garden.

Dirang Boutique Cottages: An Ancient Fortifed Village in Arunachal Pradesh

Dirang Boutique Cottages

Nestled by the river in the Dirang valley of remote Arunachal Pradesh in Northeast India , Dirang Boutique Cottages is the flagship property of Holiday Scout -- a local travel company that's pioneering tourism in the region and conducts custom tours. The owner lives on the property with his family, creating a homely atmosphere. Dirang is located between Guwahati and Tawang, but it's a delightful place to explore in itself. The Monpa tribal villagers are warm and welcoming, and will invite you for tea. You can learn their traditional dances and how to make momos, churn yak butter, explore ancient Dirang fort-jail, go on nature walks, visit Buddhist monasteries and witness monks praying at sunrise, meet local farmers and their flocks, and watch weaving. Organic produce is grown on the property as well.

Grassroutes: Eco Rural Tourism in Maharashtra

Grassroutes started in 2005 with the aim of creating livelihood opportunities for rural India. They've since helped develop 12 villages across three states for community-based tourism. Purushwadi, in Maharashtra, was their first village. Various unique activities are possible depending on the time of year, including watching fireflies in June, and the cultivation of rice. Grassroutes organizes small group fixed departure trips, curated experiences such as Warli art workshops and writers retreats, as well as custom packages based on the interests of guests. 

Rural Pleasure: Explore Gujarat's Dang District

The heavily forested Dang district (also known as the Dangs), located a bit over two hours east of Vadodara in Gujarat , has much to offer nature lovers. This small district is also home to a large tribal population. Rural Pleasure focuses on improving the livelihoods of residents in Subir village through community-based tourism. Visitors are encouraged to participate in all village chores such as plowing, milking cattle, harvesting crops. cutting wood, and meal preparation. Other activities include tribal dances, tribal painting, village walks, and forest hikes. 

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