Agro-touristic potentials on alpine summer farms

Project description

Photo: Stefan Lauber

Tourism is an important potential diversification strategy in agriculture. Little research has, however, been done on farm tourism and on how competitive farms and alpine summer farms that offer accommodation, catering and/or special experiences and edutainment are. This project aimed at sheding light on the value-added potential and competitive factors in (alpine summer) farm tourism. It bases upon literature research as well as on the presentations and “world café” results of a workshop in Scuol, Switzerland, in February 2010.

The project was supported by regiosuisse and was part of the sub-project 12 "Regional economics" within the research program AlpFUTUR - The future of summer pastures in Switzerland.

Results

The resulting overview focuses primarily on strategic planning. In the first part, the economic importance of farm tourism in Switzerland and neighbouring countries is described. In a second step, competitive factors are explored, as well as their impact on the valorisation of the potential for (alpine summer) farm tourism. The following section draws some practical conclusions and makes recommendations for developing and implementing a farm tourism project. Finally, some contact addresses for operative planning and references are listed.

The guidelines "Value-added potentials in farm tourism and alpine summer-farm tourism. Competitive factors, success factors and challenges. A strategic overview." were published in German only:

• Vogt, L., 2010: Alp- und agrotouristische Wertschöpfungspotenziale: Wettbewerbsfaktoren, Erfolgsfaktoren und Herausforderungen. Ein strategischer Leitfaden. Birmensdorf, Eidg. Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft WSL. 32 S. [PDF]

Projektteam

Regional Economics and Development Subunit:

• Luisa Vogt
• Marco Pütz

Environmental and Resource Economics Subunit:

• Stefan Lauber
  

Kontakt

• Stefan Lauber