2022 Volume 29 Issue 3 Pages 109-122
This article explores the influence of COVID-19 on farm managements that operate rural tourism businesses and their COVID-19 countermeasures. The surveyed region was around Minoh-Hokuroku region in the southern Fukuoka prefecture, well-known for rural tourism with an urban neighborhood. I conducted qualitative research on 9 farms and quantitative analysis using 51 valid responses to a structured questionnaire. The covariance structure analysis shows the relationships among sales changes in all individual business divisions together and individual divisions as well. The negative effects of COVID-19 on the demand for rural tourism and farm managements operating rural tourism businesses were found to be less severe when compared to the general tourism industry. The reasons are as follows. First, because in rural tourism, tourists mainly use their own cars and engage in leisure activities outside, many farms did not experience a major decrease in visitors. Second, farms have diversified their businesses, and thus, showed robustness to the risk. Third, some farms showed resilience by employing their own management skills. Based on the findings, a viable growth strategy in the post COVID-19 scenario could be to form a rural sightseeing district through cooperation between core resilient farms that have information transmission capacity using IT and the ability to attract customers and robust farms that can provide diverse rural tourism activities.
