Smart agritourism: How to take advantage of local and regional assets?

Agritourism, subset of rural tourism, is defined in Wallonia and in Grand Duchy of Luxembourg as a tourist accommodation or a set of tourist activities on an active farm. In these regions, rural environment becomes a recreation place for tourist seeking for rurality and also proximity of agriculture. Because of the difficulties of some agricultural areas in West European countryside, some farmers, actors of rural milieu in transformation, open their farmhouse to g! uests while other actors, among which authorities, imagine agr! itourism as an easy and magic solution to the safeguard of rural life. This paper analyses the agritourism development through its socio-economic and environmental assets to understand what influences its development in a particular region. How does it deal with environmental assets, relative proximity and local community? The analysis is based on data collected through surveys and interviews in Wallonia and in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg: 1148 questionnaires were administered in tourist locations in July and August 2012, and 31 life histories were collected from farmers these last three winters. The paper highlights that the farm has both to find a niche on the rural tourist market and to take advantage of embeddedness in the local and the regional contexts. This approach of linking typology of Walloon and Luxembourg agritourist products, type of rural areas and geographical settings shows that it cannot be limited only to environmental assets and that other factors infl! uence the development of particular agritourist products such as the accessibility, the local community, the hospitality, the rural development policy, the farming orientation, and the complementarity with tourist places.