Public Policies for Rural Tourism in Spain

This research aims to analyze public policies towards rural tourist development in Spain. As a basis for this analysis, the evolution of the main variables of supply and demand of rural tourism in Spain will be taken into consideration. Secondary information gathering was performed hence; all the information was taken from the Rural Tourism Accommodation survey of the National Statistics Institute (INE) from 2001 to 2016. The findings show that tourism sector has experienced significant growth in both supply and demand, since it has been enhanced by European public policies. A pattern of continued expansion of supply and a stagnation of demand has been detected, which raises doubts about the economic sustainability of a large part of rural tourism establishments. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.