Herbal tourism and conditions for its development

Development of civilisation, pace of life and omnipresent stress make the growing part of society want to rest far away from crowded hotels and popular holiday resorts. The need for silence is often associated with coming back to nature, admiring its beauty and harmony as well as discovering its enormous role it has in human life, it implies the creation of an extensive agri- and ecotourism offer. The article analyses the conditions for development of herbal tourism as a form of rest directly associated with discovering and experiencing the role of nature in human life which refers to the tradition and culture of Polish country-side. The basis of the paper was the analysis of offers from 30 herbal farms ex-isting in Polish agri- and ecotourism market (fig. 1, tab. 1). The supplement of the research material were the interviews with some owners of farms which offer the elements of herbal tourism and with people conducting herbal workshops. Herbal tourism can be conducted at agri- and ecotourism farms, educational farms, open-air museums and educational centres. Classes can be held in the form of workshops, presentations, field trips or herbal specials tasting. Research has shown that the most commonly offered type of activity is the herb recogni-tion workshop (fig. 2). Also popular with the tourists are culinary workshops with use of herbs and cosmetic workshops to create herbal cosmetics. Other element of the offer of herbal tourism is the possibility of using herbal products to improve health and beauty or to recover. Many agritourism farms offer well-ness facilities based on natural medicinal substances. Herbs are widely used in food preparation, and are also a branded product of farms, for example: herbal tinctures, teas, spice mixes. The organizers of herbal tourism are people who pursue their passions and use their education (Fig. 3) and skills to create an in-novative tourist offer that allows to spend time creatively and acquire new expe-riences and skills. Such a form of offer is sought after by tourists. Hence, report-ed in interviews growing interest in herbal tourism and its noticeable expansion from rural areas to cities (e.g. herbal workshops and meetings organized in large cities). Preparation of an attractive herbal offer also allows for activation of the local community by creating additional jobs in the field of tourism, development of agri- and ecotourism farms, local processing plants and drying plants. It al-lows to fully use the local natural and cultural potential