“Re-inventing rural tourism and the rural tourism experience – Conserving, innovating and co-creating for sustainability”

«The University of Aveiro is proud to announce the International Conference on Rural Tourism:

“Re-inventing rural tourism and the rural tourism experience – Conserving, innovating and co-creating for sustainability”

Dates: 5th-7th September 2013

Location: University of Aveiro, Portugal

Submission Deadline: February 15, 2013 - Full paper (max. 5,000 words) and poster abstracts (max. 5,000 characters)

Rural tourism has attracted increasing interest from academics, politicians and practioners alike. However contested its definition, the countryside’s popularity amongst urban populations, and the socio-economic and environmental challenges faced by both rural areas and by rural tourism, are strong themes worldwide. Those challenges include the decline and change of traditionally dominant agricultural and productive functions, the potential development of the countryside as a place of hedonic consumption, all coupled with numerous management issues. The list of issues is enormous: tensions and interactions between global and local, rural and urban; man versus nature; anthropocentric versus eco-centric; production and consumption; past, present and future; conservation and progress; nostalgia, imaginary and real; the desires and expectations of a growing series of diverse stakeholders with distinct interests in the “rural space”.

This conference, prepared as part of a 3-years research project on the “Overall Rural Tourism Experience” (ORTE) in three Portuguese villages, offers an in depth discussion of the “rural tourism experience”, its manifestations, meanings, impacts and evolution. It intends to significantly contribute to current reflections on the potential and limitations of rural tourism as a development tool as well as to the identification of ways to maximize this potential in certain circumstances, through a more profound understanding of the dynamics of the “overall rural tourism experience”.

Seven main themes are suggested for guiding discussions on the rural tourism experience:

1. Understanding the rural tourist: their motivations, perceptions, sensations, experiences, memories and imagination

2. Understanding rural residents’ experience with tourists

3. Experience design with endogenous resources (focusing on “countryside capital”) 

4. Entrepreneurship and innovation for quality rural tourism experiences

5. Marketing the rural tourism experience: co-creation, experience design and promotion

6. Networks and Strategic Partnership for enhancing the Overall Rural Tourism Experience

7. Enhancing sustainable development through rural tourism experiences

Publication opportunities: Selected papers will be invited for submission to a special issue of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism (indexed in ISI and SCOPUS) and of the Journal of Tourism and Development (indexed to Latindex, Dialnet, EBSCO, CAB International). Additional papers and the journal papers may also become chapters in a major book on rural tourism to be published by Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis group. All accepted final papers will be included in the conference proceedings, to be published professionally in electronic form and online, and will have an ISBN.

Keynotes:

Keith Halfacree (Swansea University)

Elisabeth Kastenholz (University of Aveiro)

Bernard Lane (Journal of Sustainable Tourism )

Nancy McGehee (Virginia Tech)

Gunjan Saxena (University of Hull)

Richard Sharpley (University of Central Lancashire)

Hio Jung Shin  (Korea Association of Rural Tourism and Kangwon University , Korea)

Enclosed, please, find more details, or visit http://cms.ua.pt/orte.

We are looking forward to your submissions and to welcome you in September 2013 in Aveiro!

The Local Organising Committee

International Conference on Rural Tourism 2013»

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