The Country Experience
Rural tourism can be defined as the “country experience” which covers a wide range of attractions and activities that take place in agricultural or non-urban areas. Its elemental features include wide-open spaces, low levels of tourism development, and opportunities for visitors to directly experience agricultural and natural environments.
It also includes farm-based holidays, special interest nature holidays and ecotourism, walking, climbing and riding holidays, adventure, sport and health tourism, hunting and angling, educational travel, arts, and heritage tourism, and, in some areas, ethnic tourism, and most notably, agritourism, which involves visiting a working farm or any agricultural, horticultural or agribusiness operation for the purpose of enjoyment, education, or active involvement in the activities of the farm or operation.
Potentially rural tourism promises some of the following benefits to rural development: 1) job creation and job retention; 2) new business opportunities and opportunities for the youth; 3) community pride and diversification; 4) preservation of rural culture and heritage; and 5) landscape conservation and environmental improvement.
There is evidence to support the claim that, as a vehicle of economic growth and diversification, tourism can make an important contribution to rural incomes both at the level of the tourism operators and more widely in the local economy.
