This book will be a valuable source of information for those concerned with rural and farm tourism, sustainable tourism and the marketing of local gastronomy. It presents cases with an international and interdisciplinary approach in order to provide ideas for strategic perspectives in tourism studies. Furthermore, for the first time the complex fields of rural and food tourism are examined from an international (Italy and Germany) viewpoint. This book explores ways in which gastronomical heritage (i.e., regional food, organic food) can be incorporated in rural tourism (above all farm tourism) and development policies as well as in new avenues of research (e.g., sensory marketing, online marketing) in order to enhance sustainable practices both in the tourism and in the agri-food sector. Overall, the book presents an overview of benchmark practices for professionals (associations of rural tourism, farmers, etc.), while offering scholars a well-founded source to refer to in order to gain up-to-date insights into the state of the art of studies on rural and food tourism.

Autorentext
Katia Laura Sidali is post-doc researcher at the University of Göttingen (Germany) since 2009. She took her PhD in a joint doctoral program between the University of Bologna (Italy) and the University of Göttingen. Her research focuses on marketing of food and tourism, consumer behavior and communication strategies in tourism. She has been awarded scholarships by the Italian Trade Commission (ICE) in 1993 and by the German Steinbeis Association in 2000. Her research appears in the following reviewed scientific journals: Journal of Global Marketing Science, Journal of the Swiss Society of Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Sociology and Journal of the Canadian Association for Leisure Studies Leisure/Loisir. Achim Spiller is Professor and Chair of Marketing of Agricultural Products and Food, University of Göttingen, Germany, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development since 2000. His research interests centre around quality management, consumer behavior, branding and organic food marketing. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Group of the Federal German Ministry of Agriculture and serves as Chair of the Stakeholder Board of the German Quality Certification System QS GmbH. His work has been published in both national and international journals (more details are available at: http://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/20076.html). Birgit Schulze is Junior Professor for Agribusiness and Supply Chain Management at the University of Kiel since 2010. She took her PhD in 2007 at the University of Göttingen. Her main research interest is the analysis of agri-food supply chains with respect to chain actors' behavior, i.e., from consumers to farmers. A special focus has been on supplier relationship management in milk and meat chains. Her work has appeared in the Journal on Chain and Network Science, Züchtungskunde, Journal of the Canadian Association for Leisure Studies Leisure/Loisir and a number of national and international conference proceedings.

Inhalt
Introduction.- Preface.- Part 1: Farm and rural tourism.- Part 2: Food, wine and tourism.- Part 3: New avenues of research: online marketing and sensory marketing.