Rural Tourism Destination: The Ligurian Farmers’ Perspective

Abstract

Rural tourism is considered a high potential form of tourism, enhanced by the demand for more sustainable and nature-based solutions, and able to contribute to territory resilience. A rural area is not necessarily a tourist destination, but it might become one, if agricultural enterprises are willing to diversify their economic activities by investing in rural tourism, and local actors provide active support and co-participation. This research focuses on the development of rural tourism in hinterland, mountainous, and hilly areas of the province of Savona in Liguria (North-West of Italy) in order to gather the farmers’ perspectives about local rural tourism destination development. Liguria is known above all as a seaside tourist destination. In recent years, policy makers have initiated a debate with local actors to relaunch Ligurian tourism by trying to develop alternative forms of tourism, such as rural tourism. A sample of 32 farmers already proposing rural tourism activities such as agritourism were involved in a mixed methodological approach aimed at validating local interest toward rural tourism and collecting information for designing future local development policies. At first, a questionnaire set up by a panel of experts was carried out, followed by one-to-one semi-structured interviews, and finally the Nominal Group Technique (NGT) was used to identify local priorities, strategies, and tools. The results highlight the willingness of farmers to invest in the rural tourism sector, the presence of heterogeneous interests, and the complexity of management of the relationship among the various stakeholders. Findings are partially explained by the early stage of development of rural tourism in the analyzed area, a phase in which starting a constructive dialogue on objective and project ideas among all stakeholders seems to be a crucial priority among the farmers taking part in the study.

Rural tourism networking and covid-19 crisis: a gender perspective

“…Among the variables related to business management considered in this study are specific training for carrying out tourism management activities and the processing of subsidies for the start-up of tourism activities by promoters. Similarly, in the literature we also find studies that relate networking to rural tourism in the post Covid period (Mirakzadeh et al 2021 ; Peira et al 2021 ), though they do not analyse the relationship between networking and gender after the pandemic. Thus, for example, in the study carried out here, it is observed that associationism is preferentially related to the male gender and specific training to the female gender.…”

“…At the time of the COVID pandemic, one of the factors that influenced the organization of tourism activities was the social one, and particularly the co-participation-related strategies (Roman et al 2020 ; Brouder 2020 ). In this respect, Peira et al ( 2021 ) afirmed that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in the tourism market, perceptions regarding the importance of local networks have developed as well as their specific characteristics that facilitate and consolidate the creation of local stakeholder’ networks. In the particular case of Mirakzadeh et al ( 2021 ), their research focused on the analysis of preventive behaviour of rural tourism hosts in the face of COVID-19 pandemic.…”

“…They explored the opportunities, strategies and barriers to ecollaboration in tourism business activities, and found that the effects of the pandemic encouraged ecollaboration and accelerated the recovery of tourism. Likewise, during the study of Peira et al ( 2021 ), the creation of stakeholder’ networks, and digital transformation were the most critical issues which emerged. For instance, farmers stressed the need to strengthen both collaboration among themselves and relations with other stakeholders.…”

The role of stakeholder in community based tourism (cbt)-based tourist village in Gentungan Village, Gondangrejo Sub District, Karanganyar Regency

“…The Covid-19 pandemic made Embung Setumpeng not operating and many stalls around the tourist object closed later. Covid-19 pandemic was a critical and big transition period for the community, particularly tourism sector; therefore some reflection is needed on the role and future of rural tourism sector [34].…”

Competitive Advantage Tourism Based on E-Tourism to Improve Tourist Destinations

“…The definition of E-tourism is the use of technology to improve tourism relations, help Journal homepage: https://bajangjournal.com/index.php/IJSS companies engaged in tourism to improve business processes and improve the knowledge-sharing process. E-tourism utilizes several features of information technology, such as tourism information databases, user databases, and electronic payments, using computer networks as a means of delivery and service transactions, as part of ecommerce [30] [31] [32].…”