La certification qualité en milieu rural comme moteur de viabilité du tourisme

• Main Authors: Francisco Javier de la Ballina, Luis Valdés, Eduardo Del Valle
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Presses de l'Université du Québec 2020-02-01
• Series: Téoros
• Subjects: rural tourism; quality; quality certification; benefits; sustainability
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/teoros/4272

One of the main pillars of sustainable rural tourism is the economic viability of businesses. The rural quality certification can be an interesting instrument to evaluate it, given that it has positive direct and indirect effects on sustainability, by improving the professionalization and size of rural firms, highlighting the architecture and traditional culture, providing smaller segments of tourists with higher economic value. The interest for businesses to obtain rural quality marks will depend on the economic benefits they can gain, at least to initially support the investment and costs of implementation. We conducted an empirical research with an extensive database on economic results obtained by a number of rural hotels in a specific region of Spain that had obtained a rural quality certification. The results provide evidence of the existence of a direct relationship between the quality certification and the performance of rural tourism, mainly because of the positive effect on the prices of hotel rooms. It is a fundamental challenge to make significant quality investments in rural hotels.