There is a large variety of types of rural areas and many of them are rich in landscape beauty. However, their preserved culture and traditions are revalued in today's rapid transformation of lifestyles. Alternative tourism is thus an emerging potential to economically support these areas, at the same time helps to preserve natural and cultural heritage. The methods provide sophisticated means to analyse the characteristics and the potential attractiveness of landscape and cultural attractions from the viewpoint of alternative tourism development. Homogenous tourism sub-regions can be defined, and the most suitable development scenarios can be found to the certain areas.

Both at national and EU level, the differentiation of specific territorial units is a key issue in development policy. The objective of the delimitation at the highest legal level is to mitigate territorial differences; it is intended to provide support for the delimited (beneficiary) territorial units. Benefits (e.g. the rate and intensity of support) are fundamentally influenced by development and growth opportunities, so the methods and the results of delimitation are both politically and professionally sensitive. This is particularly important for rural areas and rural development, because the beneficiaries' delimitation -or lack thereofis most affected by these regions. Hungary has been operating and developing a delimitation system since the '90s, the elements of which are at community level can serve as a model, and can be well-utilized. For this purpose, the paper presents the regulatory starting points and principles of spatial delimitation, the statistical methods used so far, the range of data used, and the problems that can be associated with the methods and data used so far. The authors propose a data set and a calculation method that more faithfully reflects the real situation of territorial development, which would enable development resources to better contribute to reducing territorial disparities.

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