Rural tourism and the development of the Demarcated Douro Region (NE Portugal): a strategy to promote

Abstract

Emblematic space, the Demarcated Douro Region (DDR) is not only the privileged space where are produced wines of high quality, with prominently evidence to Port Wine, but also a landscape with a superb heritage that reflects a long history. In fact, along its 250 000 hectares, terraces are full of vineyards that climb through the hillsides of the Douro River and main tributaries, providing a distinctive landscape, classified by UNESCO in December 2001 as "Living Cultural Evolutionary Landscape, World Heritage of Humanity". Despite its privileged environment, the region is involved in multiple issues of which stands out the deficient structure of agricultural properties and an aging and receding human structure. In order to mitigate these problems, investment in restructuring of the vineyards and in the training of the landowners and employees, but, above all, in Rural Tourism (RT), in its various aspects, had been made. In this context, farms associated with Oenotourism and Habitation Tourism are multiplying, in addition to projects that have invested not only in quality and distinction, but also in a privileged landscape and local gastronomy/oenology. In this communication, based on extensive fieldwork in documentary research and analysis combined with the application of structured interviews, we focus on the impact of RT in the Douro Demarcated Region (DDR), especially of oenotourism. In this context, after a general survey of the units in the DDR using various documentary sources, we selected a paradigmatic case to acess its impact. The repercussions of this strategic bet of the region are unquestionable, since this way a valuable heritage is recovered, while the vineyards are restructured and a patrimonialized landscape is preserved in a tendentially sustainable context.