Success Factors in the Development of Farm Vacation Tourism

A high level of uncertainty has for many years characterized the world agricultural market. In this unpredictable environment rural tourism remains one of the few viable economic options for rural communities (Fesenmaier et al., 1995). Although in some cases the generated profit is only a small-side income (Oppermann, 1996) the social value of farm tourism displays a variety of qualitative benefits both for farmers and for guests. As a mutual learning expe-rience (Ingram, 2002), farmers have the possibility to share their abilities with guests and affirming, in this way, their role as loyal partners in the food chain; at the same time customers recall their memory of the past (a past of more genuine food and of forgotten tastes) and also rediscover their food traditions. Despite the fact that a wide body of literature in rural and agri-tourism already exists, there is a need for organized research on a particular form of it namely farm vacation tourism2. Our main effort was to apply an analysis of suc-cess factors to the panorama of German farm tourism in order to extrapolate the key components that have helped rural entrepreneurs to successfully develop this type of tourism. 2. Current research in farm tourism A great deal of interest has been focused on the area of motivations of farm tourism hosts and guests. On the de-mand side customers often choose this type of tourism as a means to escape from the city (Putzel, 1984; Nickerson et al. 2001) and because of the satisfaction of learning from farm activities (Ingram, 2002). On the supply side there is a plethora of literature (Nickerson et al., 2001; Wilson et al., 2001; McGehee/Kim, 2004) describing not only the economic reasons, such as additional income, but also the social ones, such as to educate the consumers, which might motivate farmers to enter into this business (Nickerson et al., 2001; Wilson et al., 2001; Ingram, G., 2002