Any form of tourism that showcases the rural life, art, culture and heritage at rural locations, thereby benefiting the local community economically and socially as well as enabling interaction between the tourists and the locals for a more enriching tourism experience can be termed as rural tourism. Rural tourism is essentially an activity which takes place in the countryside. It is multi-faceted and may entail farm/agricultural tourism, cultural tourism, nature tourism, adventure tourism, and eco-tourism. As against conventional tourism, rural tourism has certain typical characteristics like; it is experience oriented, the locations are sparsely populated, it is predominantly in natural environment, it meshes with seasonality and local events and is based on preservation of culture, heritage and traditions.
Rural tourism can be defined as the country experience which encompasses a wide range of
attractions and activities that take place in agricultural or non-urban areas. Its essential
characteristics include wide-open spaces, low levels of tourism development, and opportunities
for visitors to directly experience agricultural and/or natural environments.11 Consequently, rural
tourism in its purest form should be:
- Located in rural areas.
- Functionally rural – built upon the rural world‘s special features of small-scale enterprise,open space, contact with nature and the natural world, heritage, traditional societies and traditional practices.
- Rural in scale – both in terms of buildings and settlements – and, therefore, usually small-scale.
- Traditional in character, growing slowly and organically, and connected with local families. It will often be very largely controlled locally and developed for the long term good of the area.
Benefits of rural tourism
Rural tourism, while still only a minority tourism market, is making a valuable contribution to rural economies. Its contribution can be expressed not only in financial terms, but also in terms of jobs, contributions towards funding conservation, encouragement to the adoption of new working practices, and the injection of a new vitality into sometimes weakened economies. Potentially rural tourism promises some of the following benefits to rural development
Rural tourism, while still only a minority tourism market, is making a valuable contribution to rural economies. Its contribution can be expressed not only in financial terms, but also in terms of jobs, contributions towards funding conservation, encouragement to the adoption of new working practices, and the injection of a new vitality into sometimes weakened economies. Potentially rural tourism promises some of the following benefits to rural development
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