Tourism in rural areas as a broader concept: Some insights from the Portuguese reality

Abstract

For sustainable rural development, the complementarity between the socioeconomic activities developed in rural areas is fundamental to create synergies and economic dynamics with positive externalities for the populations in less favoured spaces. The great challenge for the rural regions is the creation of attractive employment to avoid the desertification of these areas and the respective consequences. Some of the impacts of the rural exodus are related to the agroforestry activities abandonment and the increase of biomass in the respective land which, in certain circumstances, is fuel for forest fires. Tourism in rural areas/space (TRA/S) may contribute significantly to improving the complementarity among activities in less favoured spaces and promoting sustainability in mentioned areas. From this perspective, this research aims to explore dimensions associated with TRA/S, highlighting the main contributions from the scientific literature and showing that it can be considered, in some contexts, a broader concept than the concept of rural tourism. To achieve these objectives, first a systematic review based on metrics from the bibliometric analysis was carried out, considering 165 documents found in the Scopus database in a search performed on 19 March 2024 for the following topics and conditions: “tourism in rural areas” or “tourism in rural space.” Then, statistics on the Portuguese reality are presented and analysed, highlighting evidence of the context in Portugal. The findings obtained from the systematic review and bibliometric analysis show the importance of this economic activity for the rural regions and reveal some gaps in the literature that may be considered in future studies, namely the following: the links between tourism in rural areas and economic dynamics should be further developed, further address the interconnection between TRA/S dynamics and the Sustainable Development Goals, and more knowledge about the particularities of each Portuguese context. The statistical analysis of the Portuguese context shows that tourism in rural areas has benefited from the pandemic; it seems that tourists have discovered this form of tourism.