Consuming the countryside: Marketing for ‘rural tourism’

Abstract

Common perceptions of ‘rural tourism’ industries are influenced by a range of terms (such as ‘green’, ‘nature’, ‘eco-’) that position them as small-scale, low-impact activities offering an alternative to mass tourism. Their perception as ‘niche’ markets further reinforces such views. This paper explores the nature of niche markets and argues that the application of niche marketing may have a place for some traditional activities that are ‘pure’ forms of rural tourism but not for the greater part of rural visiting, better described as ‘tourism in rural areas’, and characterised by large numbers of visitors and contemporary consumption patterns that render the rural location far less important than the activity and sometimes almost irrelevant to it. This is more than a question of semantics because the labels used influence perceptions that shape the nature of policy issues and management practices. The paper concludes that both the rural environment and the small tourism businesses that depend on it will benefit from a better understanding of contemporary rural tourism consumption and marketing.