From Farming to Hosting. Pereceptions of agritourism among practitioners

Sammanfattning: Agritourism practices have been proposed to be one of the economical tools to complement the declining traditional practices in the rural areas. Farms have started to apply the practices of agritourism in order to strengthen the business. Previous research has argued that agritourism creates a beneficial position for farm, as well as for the whole community, by creating job opportunities and attracting visitors. However, it has been suggested that there is a lack of research on how practitioners perceive the practices of agritourism. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis has been to generate knowledge about practitioners’ perception of agritourism practices. I have applied a qualitative method design, more specifically qualitative interview, participant observation and document analysis. I selected five farms from the region of Halland, nine interviews with 11 respondents in total. Pictures have been taken in order to display how the practitioners practice agritourism. Furthermore, marketing material, such as brochures and websites has been studied to strengthen the argument of how the practitioners practice agritoursim. The agritourism practices which emerged in this study was the product development; public sector engagement; marketing; training; networking; location; seasonality; and hosting. I decided to illuminate the practices in the aspect of opportunities and challenges. In conclusion whether the agritourism practices are an opportunity or a challenge will depend on the financial state of the farm to invest in agritourism, the financial support practitioners receive from the public sector, the cooperation among enterprises in the rural region, and finally the personal commitment of practitioners. Keywords: Farm diversification, rural development, Agritourism, Perceptions