Rural areas in Poland, owing to their natural character and varied landscape, offer inhabitants increasingly better conditions for undertaking non-agricultural business activity. Among the most popular ones are tourism services. The development of rural tourism brings many benefits to farm owners and tourists alike. One of the most important ones is the possibility of obtaining additional income from offering lodgings for rent, and from selling agricultural products and handcrafted articles. In addition, motivation for conducting business activity in rural areas includes the need for self-fulfilment, sharing the passion, interacting with people, and establishing social relations.The rate of tourism development in rural areas is largely determined by marketing activities including the promotion of services. Rural tourism implemented in a competitive environment should take into account such activities that will allow tourism facilities to attract a satisfactory number of customers. Many a rural tourism facility owner seeks for a way to distinguish their offer from many others and to reach out to a wider group of customers. To this end, the potential of websites is most frequently made use of. Many of them, however, are of poor quality, which makes them fail to serve their function. This can be prevented through the ...
The paper describes and evaluates the space of Stobrawski Landscape Park located in the north-western part of Opolskie Voivodeship. The study on natural and tourism values was conducted by the "classification-by-points" method. The following evaluation criteria were adopted for the natural values: forestation rate, heterogeneity, the occurrence of natural protection forms and the occurrence of surface water, while for the tourism values, the criteria included: cultural diversity, the number of objects of historical value, the length of tourist trails, the presence of educational paths, and the occurrence of accommodation and catering facilities. Three evaluations, namely natural, tourism, and comprehensive tourism-and-natural evaluation, were carried out. The Head Office of Land Surveying and Cartography data, specialist literature, and field research results were used. The conducted analysis revealed the spatial diversity of the park's assets, which allows the authors to suggest measures aimed at exploiting the tourism potential of the area concerned while observing the principle of sustainable development. In terms of the natural environment, the most valuable fragments of the area under study are river valleys, particularly the Oder river valley, and the north-western part of the park where, inter alia, 4 nature reserves are located. In view of the low tourism ...
