Fonte: Cuadernos de Turismo; No. 15 (2005): Enero - Junio; 113-134
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Resumo: Rural tourism in Europe is long stablished, but recently its importance has increased, both as a tourism resource and as a source of revenue for rural community.
Nowadays consumers desire more new experience than the traditional beach holidays, they prefer individuals forms of tourism, flexibility, defferent types of accommodation, activity holidays and more contact with Nature. The emmerging needs require satisfaction and rural tourism involves more flexibility, is not mass tourism and offers rual houses and small towns, to access to these emmerging needs.
First of all, it is necessary to define the product «rural tourism» as a alternative product in order to adapt it to the changing consumer needs in travel tourism. This paper shows the components of rural tourism, resourse, services and basic and complementary infraestructures.
There is not doubt that rural tourism can benefit from the application of marketing theory. Marketing is involved in researching and understanding what consumers requiere, creating products that may satisfy the potencial demand, promoting those product effectively and then searching the result of any development in order to improve the product on offer.
