Rural tourism: a kind of sustainable tourism in the face of global economic crisis

Tourism has represented one of the major sources of balance of trade earnings for many years in the most developed countries. According to estimates by the World Tourism Organization (WTO), world tourism flows will grow by 4-5% annually over the coming years, reaching in 2020 an estimated number of 1.6 billion international arrivals, of which 378 million will be short haul international travellers (Lanfranchi M., Giannetto C., 2010). With the passage of time demand will become more diversified and this will lead to the spread of “new tourism”, the search for new products and increasingly diverse offers, characterised by organized local tourist systems. This paper underlines the importance of the tourist district (TD) or local tourist system (LTS) model as a strategic tool for creating innovative processes of endogenous development in a highly globalized framework, moreover it tries to highlight the peculiarities of tourist districts and their importance (as a network of heterogeneous actors operating at local level) in overcoming the major limitations of the distribution chain. In this model we need to improve the use and knowledge of the cultural, environmental and gastronomic heritage of the area in question and this can only happen through the creation of a tight network of relationships, composed of and coordinated by both public and private entities able to meet all the requirements (accommodation, catering, entertainment, travel etc.) of potential visitors. Therefore, the birth of DT or STL represents an important opportunity for the promotion of tourism development of different local realities, because they are able to create innovative spatial models, capable of responding effectively to needs concerning the coordination of different tourism initiatives. There has been a heterogeneous response concerning implementation of STL in Italy, indeed some regions have not taken advantage of this potential tool for tourism development, while others have created a special discipline.