Legal regulation of tourism activities in rural areas

Abstract

Rural territories may benefit from the entrepreneurial dynamics created by small tourism businesses, especially if associated to lifestyle motivations of respective entrepreneurs. Despite distrust amongst some researchers regarding small tourism businesses contribution to rural economies, their potential role for enhancing rural development, should not be neglected. Rural tourism has grown in many rural regions worldwide and today it is a stable driver of rural social and economic development. In this paper we argue that rural tourism growth should follow a divergent path from sea tourism development, because failing to do so would likely push rural tourism toward mass tourism, resulting in a harmful twofold effect: given that mass tourism requires built-up expansion to accommodate larger number of tourists, in rural areas this will certainly compromise the beauty of the landscape which is a fundamental local resource for rural tourism; built-up growth required to satisfy seaside mass tourism expectations is often characterized as holiday resorts, artificial villages, and residential high-density condos, with a consequent loss of cultural-traditional identity, which is also a key element for rural landscapes’ attractiveness.