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Different programs designed to develop rural areas in Europe grant significant funds to support several economic activities. In particular, rural lodging establishments have been key recipients of many development investments. Therefore, identifying the determinants of business success for these establishments is important for authorities, who must allocate their funding accordingly. The establishments themselves can benefit from such knowledge as well. This article examines the influence of three general factors related to the business and the entrepreneur—product, knowledge, and promotional tools—on performance, measured as occupancy, prices, sales, and profits. A survey conducted in a rural Spanish region produces results that largely confirm the proposed hypotheses.

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Entrepreneurs provide the engine of development, especially in economically unstable times. In Spain, rural tourism is undergoing a boom, and the Internet plays a vital role for tourism. This study therefore considers: (i) the importance of entrepreneurial talent for implementing a website; (ii) the relations among entrepreneurial talent, website characteristics and business performance; and (iii) the moderating effect of entrepreneurial experience. Using a sample of 150 rural tourism establishments in Spain, this study reveals how website content affects performance and how experience moderates the relationships between entrepreneurial talent and performance, and between entrepreneurial talent and website design.

In the tourism industry, most customer feedback and searches for relevant information take place online. Therefore, it is important to improve understanding of the business consequences of both customers’ online comments and businesses’ online visibility. For this study, the authors collected comments and visibility data (advertising expenditures) from a leading rural tourism infomediary website, related to 408 French rural lodging establishments. A complementary survey provided information about the lodging establishments’ performance (reputation and profitability). The results reveal that tourists’ positive perceptions of global service quality, as reflected in their comments, depend on their dual perceptions of the lodging and the surroundings. In turn, positive global service quality perceptions and visibility on an infomediary website positively affect business performance. These findings have implications for tourism scholars, as well as for establishment owners trying to track the factors that affect tourists’ evaluations of their service provision.