Abstract

The countryside, and, hence, the rural activity, presents over time important economic and social-cultural value for Greece. Today, politics are shaped, at both European and national levels, so that the rural area will be utilized, through actions that emphasize its natural and cultural environment. Within this framework, a systematic effort is being made so that rural regions are used as the base for the development of activities that will create touristic flows. Despite the fact that agritourism activities in Greece were funded through European programs for decades, no legal framework related to the agritourism activity’s conceptual definition, the persons’ entitled to exert agritourism activity determination, and the prerequisites’ needed in order to register for the label of an agritourism enterprise specification had been established. The present study aims to search, record, and evaluate the legal efforts made for the development of agritourism in Greece, from 1975 to date, in combination with the recent institutional framework establishing agritourism as a special form of rural tourism.