FEATURES AND BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES OF PIEDMONT AGRITOURISMS

Agritourism has considerably achieved a greater importance in the last decade, underling a continuous growing, also for the Italian economy, with an annual rate greater than 4%. Despite this relevance, the definition is not everywhere aligned, depending on the geographic areas in which agritourisms are located. The research focuses on agritourisms of Piedmont region, one of the North Italian regions characterized by a significant concentration of agritourism farms, providing accommodation, food and agricultural experiences. The research, conducted by an empirical analysis, aims to analyze the state of the art of agritourism management depicting the main features of agritourims, with a particular emphasis on type of services offered, dimensional features, type of customers, type of manages that run such business, key financial data. Final results show that the agritourism analyzed can be classified within the Phillip et al. (2010) framework as Working Farm, Indirect Contact (WFIC). The work shares understanding of agritourism key features as a starting point to continue the scientific and educational development of this business.