Rural development and businesswomen : the case of agritourism in Greece

Abstract

The paper is a progress report of a research project undertaken by a research team consisted of scholars of ‘Alexandrion’ Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki and of other Greek Institutions. Target population is the women all over Greece involved in agritourism either running agribusiness as individuals or as members of women cooperatives. The primary purpose of this study was to assess innovation tools in agritourism in order to promote rural development and specific objectives include the identification of respondents’ attitudes in producing local, traditional and/or biological products, to research the safekeeping of susceptible to insects products and whether they are stored in proper conditions for satisfying the customers-visitors. To identify educational needs of the target population relevant to agritourism and to make the findings available using GIS to all interested. First findings deriving mainly from researchers’ visits and from Local Development Agencies are presented showing among other information the locations and concentrations of private and cooperative business all over Greece. In this paper effort is put to introduce how rural development can be accelerated if change agents are provided with information, about women occupied in agritourism either as members of cooperative or as individual businesswomen, useful for future action.