Rural Tourism in the South of Spain: An Opportunity for Rural Development

Abstract

The Andalusian region, in the south of Spain, is famous for being a tourist area of great singularity exhibiting different degrees of development and models of touristic exploitation, strongly characterized by its offer of sun and beach. Today, this community does not limit itself to offering only a sun and beach experience since not all tourists that choose it as their destination have exclusive preference for this sector. Among all the new proposals, one modality is rural tourism, which is the focal point of this study, especially those initiatives for rural tourism in natural parks. This study will estimate a forecast to model monthly rural tourist demand in Andalusia for 2014. Its aim is to reveal its evolution in the immediate future in order to propose measures to encourage activity in said tourism sector, by making use of the 24 natural parks and protected areas located in this region.