Rural Tourism — 10 Years On

The rural, a diminishing global resource, provides us with an increasingly important environment for tourism. On the supply side, its impacts, both positive and negative, are well documented, widely debated and the subjects of an increasing literature. Often overlooked, however, are the benefits to rural visitors, the welfare effects of improved mental and physical well-being that are the widely sought (if imagined) effects of assimilating the restorative and curative powers of nature. The convergence of supply and demand, the phenomenon loosely called ‘rural tourism’, takes differing forms, develops within a vast range of physical, social and political environments, and results in a wide diversity of outcomes. Rural tourism is a dynamic phenomenon, both creating and reflecting change within its reach. Perhaps rather ambitiously, this special edition has a twofold purpose. First, the contributions reflect an international perspective that aims to identify common themes and also to highlight the multifaceted and interdisciplinary nature of ‘rural tourism’ across continents, and to illustrate its varying roles within wider development agendas. Second, a decade on, it offers something of a reflection on earlier perceptions of rural tourism as they were identified and defined in the 1994 special edition of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism (JoST). The special edition of JoST was not, of course, the first publication to address issues related to tourism in rural areas; indeed, the relationship between tourism or, more generally, recreation and leisure, and the countryside has long proved to be a fruitful area of research and, by the early 1990s, there existed a significant literature on the subject (see Lane, 1993). However, the 1994 special issue was notable for, arguably, being the first publication that attempted to identify and define rural tourism as a specific form of tourist activity as well as exploring in some depth the processes and challenges of integrating tourism into sustainable rural development. In other words, although a variety of specific issues, such as farm diversification (Frater, 1983), rural resource management (Pigram, 1983), the socio-cultural implications of rural tourism development (Bouquet and Winter, 1987; Perdue et al., 1987) and the concept of ‘rurality’ (Hoggart, 1990), as well as international comparisons of rural tourism (Grolleau, 1987), had been addressed previously, this was the first attempt to construct a theoretical framework for the study of rural tourism development. In particular, Bernard Lane’s (1994) paper ‘What is rural tourism?’ was ground-breaking in its attempt to define and clarify rural tourism. During the decade since the publication of the special issue, increasing attention has been paid to rural tourism development within the tourism literature (see, e.g. Sharpley and