Bariery rozwoju przedsiębiorczości na przykładzie agroturystyki w polskich Karpatach

Abstract

The Carpathian Mountains are one of the most important tourist regions of Poland. Tourism in rural areas has long traditions and is constantly growing. In addition the number of agritourism farms is one of the highest in the country. The paper presents the current state and changes of agritourism in the Polish part of the Carpathian Mountains, as a form of non-agricultural activity of rural in mountain areas. Also, barriers to the development of agritourism were diagnosed. The study has shown that changes in socio-economic conditions and trends in modern tourism significantly shape the development and agritourism offer in the region. It was found that the distribution of agritourism offers is very diverse, and the number of agritourism farms has decreased slightly in recent years. Only in a dozen municipalities which have high tourist attractiveness and high tourist traffic associated with it, the number of agritourism entities is still high. The analysis allowed for distinguishing the following five groups of barriers to the development of agritourism. They are: natural and cultural, economic, social, legal, and marketing strategy. The data for carrying out the above-mentioned analyses were collected from the Central Statistical Office (Glowny Urząd Statystyczny – GUS) and regional Agricultural Advisory Centre (Ośrodek Doradztwa Rolniczego – ODR). Verification of the collected material was based on the interviews with agritourism service providers (275) and supplemented with a field study.