Educational farm as a new tourism product (the example of Podkarpackie province)

Abstract

One of the latest initiatives in rural areas is an educational farm whose main mission is to educate by promoting greater awareness of the village’s cultural and natural values. The offer of educational farms can be attractive to tourists staying in agritourism farms, and educational activities enrich the tourism offer of the region and improve the appeal of a given facility or area of staying. Rural areas of Podkarpackie province have great tourism potential, and similar to many other tourism products, educational farms can attract tourists and make their stay attractive. The study area includes 13 of the type of farms that offer a variety of educational programs related to agriculture, ecology, processing agricultural products, handicraft or dying out professions workshops. The article describes the offer of all educational farms in the Podkarpackie province basing mainly on the results of surveys conducted among the owners and on generally available publicity information. Based on the survey results, it was found that the activity of educational farms is popular mainly among organized groups of students and this concept is still relatively unknown to a wide range of tourists. No significant impact of educational farms on the increase of tourist interest in a given agritourism facility has been revealed.