Agroturizam u europskom kontekstu
Agrotourism in European Context

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on agrotourism as a selective form of tourism and starts with some definitions of the concept itself. The great variety of definitions results in different approaches to the concept. Still, a definition that has been adopted at the Bilbao conference in 1991 accepted a unique syntagm for out-of-city space as a ‘rural space’. Therefore, the concept of rural tourism has been accepted. It embraces different forms of tourist activities: agrotourism and farms; outdoor activities; eco-tourism; rural experience; cultural tourism; and other combined forms of special interest tourism. The article presents legal framework within which Croatian rural tourism is defined as well as the state of this form of tourism in Croatia. Further it is compared with the organization of rural tourism in other European countries. Non-existence of a unique model of agrotourism in today’s Europe is reflected in the diversity of its organization both on national as well as on regional levels. Popularity and demand of this type of a holiday, on the other hand, facilitate rapid development of agrotourism in accordance to the market needs. Non-existence of uniform European policies in this field also results in the diverse degree of development of single models. Examples of agrotourism in Italy, Austria, France, Great Britain, Cyprus and Romania show different models in the organization of rural tourism. Italy is one of the rare countries which operates within a national legal framework but also practices regional laws which regulate it locally/regionally. In all presented countries, rural tourism operates within various associations be they governmental organizations (Cyprus Agrotourism Company), nongovernmental organizations (Agriturist in Italy, Farm Holidays in Austria, Gîtes de France in France, ANTREC in Romania) or professional organizations (Farm Stay UK in Great Britain). There is no unique model of rural tourism in Croatia, too. Different laws regulate some aspects of rural tourism but not its organizational aspect. Some counties are more active in this form of tourism (such as County of Istria or Dubrovnik and Neretva County) which affects also the geographical distribution of rural tourism households. World trends show the great increase of this form of tourism although the organizational differences influence its stronger and more systematic growth to a certain extent. Still, modern rural households are more adaptive to the new forms of economic activities which include tourism. In this way, contemporary ethnology has a great role since a stronger rural economy has been noticed as a relevant tourism development direction.

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