Management transformations which started at the turn of the eighties and nineties of the 20th century in Poland have thoroughly changed socio-economic conditions of the development of the country and its regions. The transformation of state-controlled management system required adjustment of various socioeconomic and spatial structures to the new rules of market economy. This process, being based on transformation of the previous structures created in the centrallysteered management system and on the development of new structures, is being observed in many places in Poland, also in rural areas in the Świętokrzyskie Province. One of the most popular forms of development of rural areas is agritourism at present. The study attempts to assess the influence of geographical environment on agritourism development potential in the Świętokrzyskie Province. The analysis of elements of natural environment and tourist amenities makes it possible to evaluate how attractive rural areas are from the standpoint of agritourism development. The study gives numerical attractiveness indicators to show how rural areas are diversified in their likelihood of success for agritourism business ...
These days many communes treat tourism as a major factor for economic activation and a simulator to economic growth. This is well visible in areas that are attractive in terms of tourism as follows: tourist values, access by transporta-tion and status of tourist development. The objective of the paper was to assess se-lected elements of tourist attractiveness of the districts in the province of Opole. The research has an additional practical objective since the results will be used by experts reviewing co-financing applications for projects under ROP OV 2007-2013. The research material used in this paper is secondary and has been acquired as a result of studies of statistics as well as bibliographic literature and studies. A descriptive method was applies which is one of induction research methods. The research covered 12 districts of the province of Opole and the year of 2008. The analysis covered selected elements of tourist attractiveness of the in-vestigated area. The research included: protected areas, number of musealia, length of public roads, number of road accidents, number of hotels and number of hotel beds. A development template method which is multidimensional comparative analysis was applied to assess the tourist attractiveness of the studied district. Con-sidering ...
