Evolutionary approach of rural tourism in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

Rural tourism has emerged as an ambivalent activity that has generated mixed results in the Brazilian countryside. The aim of this study was to analyze the evolution of rural tourism and productive restructuring in rural properties in southern of Brazil. For this, a longitudinal study was conducted to characterize the changes towards multifunctionality of the rural territory. It was used an approach, focusing on rural actors, applied to nine rural properties, using questionnaires at four different times (1997, 2002, 2005 and 2011). It is argued that in the southern of Rio Grande do Sul, the development of tourism shows the weakening of traditional productive structures and the availability of rural heritage, which means a multifunctionality territorial logic, actor s multiactivity and new urban needs related to conserved environmental and cultural spaces. It was concluded that rural tourism is a complementary activity to rural economies, which allows the reproduction of the tangible and intangible heritage of rural space, but at the same time it expresses the weakening of the social structures, through activities that do not have a clear horizon to the future.