Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
TOWARDS A CONCEPT OF RURAL TOURISM
Keane et al.'s (1992) innovative but little known study on rural tourism offers a number
of insights into the definition of rural tourism acknowledging that there are a variety of
terms used to describe tourism activity in rural areas: agritourism, farm tourism, rural
tourism, soft tourism, alternative tourism and many others which have different meanings
from one country to another. Keane also points out that it is difficult to avoid some of this
confusion in relation to labels and definitions because the term 'rural tourism' has been
adopted by the European Union to refer to the entire tourism activity in a rural area
(Keane et al. 1992). One way of addressing this seemingly tautological proposition, that
tourism in rural areas is not necessarily rural tourism when so many typologies exist for
types of tourism that may or may not be deemed rural tourism, is to examine what makes
rural tourism distinctive.
WHAT MAKES RURAL TOURISM DISTINCTIVE?
Lane (1994) discusses the historical continuity in the development of rural tourism and
examines some of the key issues which combine to make rural tourism distinctive.
Bramwell (1994:3) suggests that despite the problems of defining the concept of 'rural',
'it may be a mistake to deny our commonsense thoughts that rural areas can have
distinctive characteristics or that these can have consequences for social and economic
interactions in the countryside'. The views and perceptions that people hold of the
countryside are different from those of urban areas, which is an important starting point
for establishing the distinctiveness of rural tourism. Lane (1994) actually lists the subtle
differences between urban and rural tourism, in which individual social representations of
the countryside are a critical component of how people interact with rural areas. In fact,
Squire (1994) acknowledges that both the social representations and personal images of
the countryside condition whether people wish to visit rural areas for tourism, and what
they see and do during their visit.
Lane (1994) also highlights the impact of changes in rural tourism since the 1970s,
with far greater numbers of recreationalists and tourists now visiting rural areas. As
Patmore's (1983) seminal study on recreation and leisure acknowledges, the impact of
car ownership has led to a geographical dispersion of recreationalists and tourists beyond
existing fixed modes of transport (e.g. railways). Consequently, tourism has moved away
from a traditional emphasis on resorts, small towns and villages to become truly rural,
with all but the most inaccessible wilderness areas awaiting the impact of the more
mobile tourist. Despite this strong growth in the demand for rural tourism, Lane (1994)
acknowledges the absence of any systematic sources of data on rural tourism, since
neither the World Tourism Organisation nor OECD have appropriate measures. In
addition, there is no agreement among member countries on how to measure this
phenomenon. One way of establishing the distinctive characteristics of rural tourism is to
derive a working definition of rural tourism. Here the work by Lane (1994) is invaluable
since it dismisses simplistic notions of rural tourism as tourism which occurs in the
