Nature and rural cultural tourism is a quickly growing but still innovative segment of the global tourism market. From a mere niche it has during the last years became an important segment that involves millions of travellers each year. Developing this type of tourism is a very important possibility to rural areas and their stakeholders. We have, however, a lot to do in this sector and specially in combining nature and cultural values as well developing multi sided travelling opportunities for different tourist segments.

Potential benefits produced by nature and culture tourism for the host regions and the involved stakeholders are huge and many sided. Nature tourism is an important opportunity to diversify local rural economies that have lost part of their economic base.

Six LAGs (Local Action Groups) started working together in this project: 5Star Nature, that involves rural areas with a high nature quality and very valuable resources, to explore and improve the opportunities for international tourism, detecting good practices on nature tourism, training entrepreneurs and funding a network involving 4 countries