The market for rural tourism in North and Central Portugal

Abstract

Tourism in rural areas is frequently studied from a perspective of planning and community development. Marketing research in this field is rather scarce, perhaps due to the small-scale nature and diversity of supply, insufficient available resources, or because of the diverse nature of the market, making data collection difficult. If market studies are rare, even rarer are psychographic segmentation approaches. The current study uses benefit segmentation in order to understand if and how tourists differ in what they look for in Portuguese rural areas. This should provide an important basis for marketing and tourism planning decisions.