The case of Agrotourism in Greece and its contribution to regional development

A global tendency towards agrotourism is identified given the fact that tourists have become more sophisticated, environmentally conscious and curious to experience the country life. Thus, the purpose of this study is to present an overall view of the agrotourism concept and points out its contribution to regional development. Greece will be the benchmark of this report and in particular, the prefecture of Messenia. Based on an extensive theoretical background complementary with a qualitative analysis of structured interviews, it investigates the several actions and initiatives taken for the development of agrotourism, as well as, the major success factors and bottlenecks in the implementation process. According to the former, passion for nature, the morphology and the climate of the due region are to be mentioned, while the major barriers which derived from the research are lack of cooperation, poor marketing and insufficient guidance from public actors and authorities. Part of the methodology will also be a comparative analysis between Messenia and three regions of relevance; North Tyrol, Tuscany and Scane, in order to shed light to the main similarities and differences among them. Quite surprising is the fact that Messenia proved to be closer to North Tyrol and Scane, than to Tuscany region, in the way agrotourism is applied. Ultimately, concerning the role of alternative types of tourism in rustic areas, the current study came with several results and conclusions. With respect to the aforementioned, not all regions can be considered suitable or attractive locations for agrotourism and its social effect turned out to be more powerful than the financial one. However, the focal point here is that, even if people of rural areas are driven by social gains, they seem to be considerably sensitive when it comes to job creation. Overall, this thesis suggests that human – oriented actions and initiatives promoting innovativeness and diversification will have to be taken in tandem with a greater public intervention and aims to fulfill certain gaps in the literature and shed more light to issues seeking attention through relevant policy recommendations and implications for further research.