Pandemic COVID-19 as a barrier for rural tourism development – the case of South Moravia, Czechia
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | The current situation with pandemic COVID-19 has a negative reflection on the development of tourism. (Gössling, Scott & Hall, 2021) It imposes restrictions on both tourism supply and tourism demand. Governments lockdown travel businesses and at the same time restrict the freedom of movement. Thus, the supply and demand sides have to cope with the exogenous shocks. The first evidence of experience and reactions of travel businesses presented WYSE (2020) in early March 2020. On the example of bookings Keller (2020) describes how visitors start to adapt their travel behaviour following the exit strategies. Pandemic COVID-19 is very often related to international tourism (Škare, Soriano & Porada-Rochoń, 2021). However, even rural tourism is affected by the worldwide spread crisis. To highlight the impacts on rural tourism, the research focuses on middle and small side entrepreneurs (e. g. farmers, winemakers, local rural museums, local accommodation providers; local providers of hippo-therapy) and on local tourist organizations (e. g. DMO, tourist information centres) involved in rural tourism. The aim is to find out how they overcame the situation with COVID-19. How did they cope with government restrictions? How did they react to the visitor's changed behaviour? Whether they adapted their offer to the situation, or not. In other words, the contribution deals with the changes in visitor behaviour from the perspective of rural tourism providers. The research is a case study of South Moravia and applies both qualitative (questionnaire survey) and quantitative (interviews) methods. Research data shows that rural tourism providers manage the government measures and tailor their services to visitors' changing needs as well. Besides the loss of incomes and visitors, providers of rural tourism face the increase of additional costs related to the adoption of hygienic measures. The majority of all rural tourism providers responded that their segment of visitors changed. Namely, the absence of foreign visitors was replaced by domestic ones. |
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