Farm tourism – who are the potential visitors?

This paper focuses on the visitors to farms which offer various tourism activities and services. It is based on data from ten representative national Norwegian surveys, carried out by Synovate Norway between 1991 and 2007. In Norway, like in many regions and countries, rural- and farm tourism is becoming an important activity to promote vitality and sustainability of rural communities. The countryside has increasingly become a place of consumption and recreation. As such, farm tourism is part of the shift in the economic base of rural societies. Moreover, in making the distinctive features of the local places and people more appreciated, rural- and farm tourism represent a counter-trend to homogenisation and mass tourism. In this paper we focus on the domestic market. Our analysis of the domestic farm tourism visitors shows significant increases in the portion who have visited farm-tourism enterprises since the 1991. In addition to describing who these visitors are, the paper also gives a description of the potential visitors within the domestic tourist market.