RURAL TOURISM OR TOURISM IN RURAL AREAS?

THE NEW TOURIST PHENOMENON WITH NATURE AS THE MAIN PROTAGONIST

Why living a tourist experience in rural areas, distinguished for economic marginality and isolation?
The city dwellers increasingly hear the call to rural areas that offer wide landscapes, pure air, food quality, slow rhythms… basically: escape from the daily routine.
Because of their distance from the cities, these areas lack in some advanced services and, at an economic level, job opportunities and incomes are often linked to agricultural activity, which has been for years in a phase of crush of the margins of farmers. Rural tourism is the best reaction: in the simplicity the tourist discovers a great treasure.

But what is rural tourism?

Experiencing rural tourism doesn’t only mean getting to know a rural area, but fully living a dimension that brings you back in time, to simplicity and authenticity. You will admire the set the rural resources:
– the rural landscape, highly characterized by both natural elements and human action,
– food and wine, made of the local products and agricultural biodiversity,
– the material culture linked to rural, agri-food and craft activities specific of each particular place, a trait that permeates every scope of the rural areas,

– community life and its socio-cultural aspects,
– the historic-artistic heritage connected to the villages that inhabit the rural areas,
– slow rhythms, linked to the seasons and nature,
– the abundance of nature: fauna, flora, air, colors, scents and landscapes.

Tourism based on these resources...

takes place not only in the rural areas, but finds its raison d'etre in the resources that these express. Especially in the most stylish destinations, there are many different examples of tourism in the rural areas that derive from huge investments in the realization of touristic accommodations by investors that most of the time reside elsewhere.
Some examples may be the holiday resorts and the touristic villages built in rural areas or the redevelopment and renovation of entire villages totally addressed to hospitality through the construction of fully equipped hotel facilities (SPA, wellness center, gourmet restaurant, swimming pool, sport facilities, yoga school, massage center, etc...).

As a rural tourist you will rediscover an authentic connection with the territory through the discovery of unique landscapes, the encounter and the exchange with the inhabitants, the learning of part of the historic-cultural and material heritage widespread in the areas, the immersion in slow rhythms, the discovery of an historical cultural and material heritage on which is based the peasant culture of the place, the rediscovery of a close contact with nature.
Rural tourism allows marginal territories to create job opportunities and to revitalize the economy promoting, for instance, multifunctionality inside the farms (farm stays, teaching farms, etc…). It also helps to induce profits to the farms (direct sale and possibility to create connections with the costumers that live far from there), and to the whole area as well (restaurant, hospitality, transport and sport services, etc…).

This represents an asset that induces a greater sensitivity to the locals to protect and maintain the material culture that permeates the rural territory and that allows to protect the landscape, the biodiversity and the history of the place. This stops the advancement of industrial agriculture that is not really linked to the territory in which it is conducted, that would destroy the resources listed above that make a rural area unique ad wealthy.
It is in this kind of tourism that Rurally wants to accompany you.