What is Residential Tourism

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the global tourism sector in an unprecedented manner. After the relaxation of lockdown measures, there was an expectation about the chosen tourist environments and how rural tourism would be positioned. This chapter starts from a theoretical framework on rural tourism in Portugal and analyses how this segment has been impacted by COVID-19 from a quantitative perspective and the choices of summer season environments by Portuguese tourists through a questionnaire survey applied to almost 700 Portuguese tourists. The results show that demand increased and that rural environments strengthened their position relative to pre-COVID-19 planning. This was mainly motivated by the notion of safety conveyed thanks to low population density which leads to the perception that rural areas offer a lower risk of transmission. This information provides a relevant support tool for rural territories, since they now have an opportunity to be creative, to re-invent themselves, and to promote a more sustainable tourism.