Defining ‘rurality’ for rural wellbeing tourism - Halfacree’s conceptual triad of the production of rural space in practical-level tourism development in Northern Europe

Abstract

The developers in Northern Europe are increasingly looking into tourism as a potential livelihood and contributor to employment and local economies, especially in rural (and peripheral) areas. One potential form of tourism to be further developed in these areas is wellbeing tourism that has started to gain increasing attention in rural areas. In addition, the development of the common rural wellbeing tourism market has started to increase in Northern Europe, and especially around the Baltic Sea. However, the nonexistence of shared understanding of the central concepts, ‘rural’ and ‘wellbeing tourism’ hinders international, collaborative development activities among the various tourism stakeholders operating in the area. Therefore, it is essential to construct a common conception in order to progress in the development of the common rural wellbeing tourism market. In this article we describe one construction process of a commonly accepted, over-arching definition for ‘rural tourism’ or ‘rurality’ in a transnational and multi-stakeholder development project. Our aim is to examine the applicability of the well-known triad understanding of the ‘rural’, originally introduced by Halfacree, in this context. The triad has been utilised in different tourism-related contexts, but its practicality and potential for use in tourism development has been studied less. The definition process we describe in this article shows that the triad cannot be directly utilised for practical-level tourism development purposes. The results indicate that a more critical approach or even deconstruction of Halfacree’s triad could give more fresh and new angles to the development of rural tourism products.