The Role and Importance of Non-Governmental Organizations in Rural Tourism

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Ebru Ulucan
İsmail Kızılırmak

Abstract

The rural tourism, which is defined as all tourism activities performed in rural areas, is accepted as an alternative tourism type which will attract the people who want to go away from the difficulties of city life. On the other hand; it allows the local residents to get a share from tourism incomes besides their agricultural incomes and to improve themselves in socio-cultural way. As having convenient lands suitable for agriculture and tourism, Turkey has an important potential for rural tourism which cannot take enough advantage of this potential. In order to increase this potential, it should be considered to inform and encourage the local residents to participate into tourism activities. In this context; the non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which are defined as the organizations founded by local residents gathered voluntarily, work for the benefits of society and for a region’s economic, political and social development; have an effective role. In this project, by considering their role in tourism industry, it is searched that what kind of NGOs play an active role in rural tourism and what kind of functions they have by using the literature review method used in qualitative methods. As a result of the research, it has observed that some countries such as Italy, France, Spain, etc. the capacity of rural tourism facilities has been increased from one thousand beds to ten thousand in total. This suggests that rural tourism can be an effective form of tourism in terms of income generation if due care is taken. At the end of the study, the rural tourism organizations in Turkey have examined suggestions on how to improve their function have been discussed with the comparisons made.

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How to Cite
Ulucan, E., & Kızılırmak, İsmail. (2021). The Role and Importance of Non-Governmental Organizations in Rural Tourism. Journal of Turkish Tourism ResearchSEARCH, 4(1), 729–745. Retrieved from https://tutad.org/index.php/tutad/article/view/204
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