Agritourism and its forms

Abstract

The term agritourism describes any type of activity based on the relation between agriculture and tourism and designates a concept over 100 years old, when city-dwellers visited their relatives or friends in the countryside in search of a more pleasant air and of quiet. This practice has become even more popular because of the following: when automobiles appeared and developed; when people were under the pressure of economic crises; when city-dwellers tried to escape war-developed stress; because of countryside nostalgic ones; due to the popularisation of agritourism activities. In the few decades since it has been practiced, agritourism – still in search of one’s own identity – has known several names (agrarian tourism, agricultural tourism, farm tourism, countryside tourism, and rural tourism) and definitions whose common element is the rural and that all tend to focus on those types of activities visitors practice in the rural area.