Abstract
During the last decades, tourism activities were promoted by local and regional policy-makers as a universal solution for rural areas’ suffering from massive depopulation, technological delay, or economical struggles. A large debate flourished in the literature on whether and to what extent tourism could play a role in supporting rural localities. Some valid evidence was brought by researchers backing the cure-all role of tourism, as well as by those who criticized the limited, or even negative, impact of tourism on rural areas. However, following the economic crisis of 2008, the attention switched to a newer and more relevant topic: Does tourism increase the resilience performance of rural areas? Our paper tries to answer this question by focusing on both economic and demographic resilience, which are the most sensitive sectors during an important shock. Following a detailed territorial breakdown according to a twofold typology (spatial accessibility and number of employees), correlations were used to determine the impact of tourism activities on building resilience for each type of rural territory. The results indicated a positive effect of tourism activities upon economic and demographic resilience performance in highly accessible rural areas, while in peripheral areas, the impact was insignificant. This paper provides new insights into the various roles that tourism plays in rural areas and offers suggestions for local policy-makers.
Highlights
Tourism represents one of the most dynamic economic branches of the last four decades, and its role in local and regional economies has constantly grown, reaching over 1.4 billion arrivals worldwide and generating over 10% of global GDP before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic [1]
While the economic crisis manifested for a longer period, the tourism manifestation of the crisis manifested only until 2010
This is not surprising, as previous studies showed that tourist arrivals in European countries displayed higher levels of resilience compared to other economic sectors following the 2008 financial crisis [70,71,72]
Summary
Tourism represents one of the most dynamic economic branches of the last four decades, and its role in local and regional economies has constantly grown, reaching over 1.4 billion arrivals worldwide and generating over 10% of global GDP before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic [1]. While it was initially considered a predominantly urban activity, both in terms of origin and destination of tourist fluxes [2], it spread rapidly in rural areas, to the point of becoming a central point in rural development strategies [3,4]. The economic impact is by far the most scrutinized, with considerable positive evidence from studies in Europe, America, and, more recently, Asia [22,23]
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