Success and Growth in Rural Tourism Micro-Businesses in Finland: Financial or Life-Style Objectives?

Abstract

Rural tourism is tourism that takes place outside densely populated communities and tourist centres. It is often considered small-sized and connected to the farming industry and outdoor activities that offer the guests individual service (Borg 1997). Rural tourism is local tourism, tourism “of the area,” sought after and controlled by local authorities (Grolleau 1996: 7). According to Bramwell (1993), the small scale of firms and their functional relationship with nature, heritage or traditional societies make them rural. Rural tourism in Finland includes cottage holidays, farm holidays, bed and breakfast lodging, farm visits and group catering, organised activity services and holiday villages (Finnish Tourist Board 1994: 1–2). The estimated number of this kind of rural tourism businesses in Finland is about 4000 (Ahlgren 2000; Martikainen 2002). In accommodation statistics, only businesses with more than ten rooms or cottages are included, which means that only about 5% of rural tourism accommodation units are included in the statistics. According to the National Rural Tourism Working Group three quarters of the rural tourism businesses have originally been farms. However, today tourism is a major source of income for only 25% of the rural tourism entrepreneurs (Martikainen 2002). The average turnover of a full-time rural tourism business in Finland is about 120.000d (Puurunen 2001). Profitability of full-time tourism enterprises is also weak (Kupiainen et al. 2000), which in most cases is a consequence of the seasonality of the businesses (Martikainen 2002). While rural tourism has much to do with farms, agriculturalists view rural tourism as a category of farm diversification, whereas tourism researchers and regional tourism promoters consider it to be a sector of tourism in its own right (Busby & Rendle 2000: 635). Diversification is oneway for a small rural firm to reduce a firm’s risk of being too dependent upon one product, to gain growth and confirm the income of the owner-manager. Tourism is the third most popular means of farm diversification in Finland (Rantamaki-Lahtinen 2002) and 39% of the rural tourism entrepreneurs are still farmers, too (Martikainen 2002: 10–11).