Defining a Rural Tourism Industry
Trying to define rural tourism is an acknowledged thorny issue, especially within academia. Graham Dann (1999) invokes Oppermann (1996:86-7) when he reaffirms that “there is not even a commonly accepted definition of what rural tourism is.” This, of course, makes describing the industry especially difficult. In order to gain some appreciation of what might be defined as a rural tourism industry, it’s helpful to see how the industry players describe the game they’re in, and what it is they produce for their markets.
Definitions of Rural Tourism, and hence the Rural Tourism Industry, tend to be generated by the suppliers, or would-be suppliers, of rural tourism product. As is usually the case, there is no explicit acknowledgement that a ‘tourism industry’ only exists in rural areas if tourists find what is offered attractive enough to want to visit and consume. However, it is possible to synthesize a definition of what the rural tourism experience is from what each of the industry stakeholders and researchers have described about the different aspects of the industry that they are concerned about.
Arriving at a definition of rural tourism is more often a function of what aspects of rural tourism activity the proponents or suppliers are concerned with, rather than some kind of consistent concept that is recognized around the world. However it possible to take the various definitions used by writers and formulate a picture of what rural tourism is and what elements create the rural tourist experience. To build up a detailed picture that accommodates all the “operators” in rural tourism, the definitions found in the literature were organized by their degree of focus. The easiest definitions to identify were those that describe farm-based tourism.
Rural tourism is located in agricultural landscapes and is characterized by enjoyment of a tamed- nature or highly modified landscape. It is about the land uses and human cultures that the interaction between humans and the land have created. It positions agriculture and farms as the foundation upon which the attraction is built.
With farms as the foundation or core elements, the CORE product domain is defined by on-farm tourism operators. The most common terms used are Agri-tourism and Farm Tourism which refer to the same phenomena as described in the LEADER definition of agri-tourism. Activities included in this are variously described as “hosting” and “holidays”, but the key meaning relates to the use of tourism as a “supplement to” farm business.