Modaliteti finansiranja ruralnog turizma u Republici Srbiji / Funding of rural tourism in the Republic of Serbia

The topic of the research presented in this doctoral thesis is defining the potential modalities of financing the rural tourism in the Republic of Serbia with respect to the development of the tourism offer. Rural tourism began to develop in the Republic of Serbia during the 70s of the 20th century. Its state-of-the-art development cannot be compared to the one existing in other European countries with the similar length of the developmental period. The reasons for this are numerous various factors, both in favour of the tourism offer and the tourism demand. These are primarily political, economic, social, legal and regulatory, institutional, as well as organizational and management factors. A common link can be identified in all of the above factors such as finances, actually the lack of financing models, both with regards to tourism offer and the tourism demand. In order to develop rural tourism, it is necessary to define the financing modalities of the rural tourism offer in all its paradigms, which is the topic of this thesis. Certainly, it is essential to define the financing modalities of the rural tourism demand if the goal is rural tourism development, however, this topic requires a tailor-made and detailed analysis and research. Financing of the rural tourism offer is complex because it is closely related to financing of agriculture in general. The issue of financing agriculture has been omnipresent and yet an unresolved problem of the local economy and agricultural policy. It is mandatory to simultaneously work on solving the issues of financing both the rural tourism and agriculture, taking into account that they show causal relationship. Discouraging economic and financial position of agriculture causes the inability of the rural population to independently develop the tourist activity aimed at generating additional income and improving the living standards. The development of rural tourism can be a driving force of agricultural development, i.e. of the economic development of the rural areas and improvement of unfavourable demographic situation thereof. This is especially important for the Republic of Serbia, where every fourth village is dying out. Rural tourism development would provide positive economic effects on the level of agricultural holdings, local economic communities, as well as on the level of state. Financial resources persist to be one of the biggest limitations of rural tourism development in the Republic of Serbia, which puts forward and supports the topic of this doctoral thesis and the need for the proposed research. Financial resources remain to be the developmental constraint in terms of insufficiency and the unavailability of solid financial resources. The primary goal of this research is to present the former and current, as well as to define the potential modalities of financing the rural tourism and rural tourism offer in the Republic of Serbia. Plausible rural tourism funding modalities include: (1) financing of tourism offer (in the narrow sense) in the initial stage of structured development; (2) financing of tourism offer (in the narrow sense) in the developed stage; (3) financing the development of tourist facilities; (4) financing the development of rural infrastructure; (5) financing the development of human resources in rural tourism; (6) investing in the development of the rural tourism product promotion; (7) investing in the development of the rural tourism product sales channels. Secondary goal of this research is to analyze the factors that may have an impact on self-financing of the service providers in rural tourism in the Republic of Serbia. The dissertation analyzes various experiences related to the development and financing of rural tourism in the European Union, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Austria and Romania. Synthesizing all of them leads to relevant conclusions and proposals related to funding, but also to redesigning the domestic rural tourism offer, which could indirectly influence improvement of the economic status of rural tourism in Serbia, and consequently the potential to selffinance this activity.