ANALYSIS OF RURAL TOURISM IN THE EUROPEAN UNION AND CROATIA

Rural tourism in the EU Member States is an important segment of the tourist market offer. Rural areas achieve multiple benefits by developing rural tourism. From this point of view, rural tourism revitalises rural areas, decreases depopulisation, enables valorisation of economic resources ... On the other hand, rural tourism points out, and by this preserves, cultural environment, natural, traditional, cultural, and historical characteristics of a specific rural area. In this way, regional diversity, authenticity, and recognisability are achieved in the united Europe, which provides competitive advantage on the European Union's tourist market. The basic pre-requisite of rural tourism development is the rural area. In the EU territory and in Croatia, rural areas comprise about 90% of the space inhabited by about a half of the total number of inhabitants. By various developmental programmes, policies, and strategic guidelines, the European Union in different ways provides certain Member States, as well as countries outside of the European Union, with a possibility to use rural development funds. The paper provides analysis of the characteristics of rural tourist market. The subject of analysis is development of rural tourism in the selected EU countries, which will be compared with the rural tourism development in Croatia, as well as the impact of the EU programme and policy on rural tourism development.