Abstract

BALTAZAR BERNAL, Obdulia  and  ZAVALA RUIZ, Jesús. Rural tourism as significant experience and study from existential phenomenology. Rev. Mex. Cienc. Agríc [online]. 2015, vol.6, n.6, pp.1387-1401. ISSN 2007-0934.

Rural tourism is a trend before the crisis of mass tourism, sun and beach standardized that does not have an agreed definition, because the rural world has varied meanings. First of all, an etymological analysis of the term "rural tourism" is made, an expanded definition for the Mexican context as "rancher tourism" is proposed and exhibited a multidimensional concept: economic, managerial and phenomenological. Then, a framework is outlined from a phenomenological-existential perspective for the study of the tourist experience as the symbolic dimension of rural tourism and suggests using the concept "existential authenticity" as the axis. Finally, a case study of the failure is included in the construction of a "memorable experience" (or significant) for a weekend trip to the magical village of Cuetzalan, Puebla, Mexico. We used as a reference, the travel of an urban couple, four years later, through an interview. It was concluded that: 1) the existential phenomenology and the concept of "existential authenticity" are useful for the study of the tourist experience and design of tourism offers; 2) outlined the framework of reference can be used to study other social actors involved; and 3) the achievement of a "memorable tourist experience" does not depend on features as the major objective oftourism, but the existential condition oftourist and the real involvement with the places, services and people as a whole and therefore, its ability to build transcendent meanings, beyond instrumental.

Keywords : definition of rural tourism; existential authenticity; memorable experience framework.

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