CONTEMPORARY BASIS OF RURAL TOURISM DEVELOPMENT IN ŠUMADIJA DISTRICT Nemanja Matić1, Snezana Djordjevic2, Milan Vujic3 *Corresponding author E-mail:
[email protected] A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T Review Article This paper aims at showing that the regionalization, innovations, smart specialization and sustainable tourism Received: 28 June 2019 development like contemporary basis of rural tourism Accepted: 17 September 2019 development can significantly contribute to increasing the competitiveness of both of the whole region and all doi:10.5937/ekoPolj1903869M its parts, and hence rural ones. We used several methods UDC 338.486/.488(497.11 Šumadija) such as literature analysis and empirical research based on the questionnaires distributed to the stakeholders in Keywords: the tourism of the Šumadija District. Our conclusion is Regionalisation, innovations, that there is a positive attitude among the stakeholders tourism, rural areas, towards creating a tourism region in the Šumadija District Šumadija district, sustainable based on innovations, smart specialization and sustainable development development. We also claim that rural tourism is a priority and that the stakeholders in the Šumadija District should JEL: O18, P25, R11, Z32, Q01 focus on this type of tourism. © 2019 EA. All rights reserved. Introduction Rural areas are usually less developed than urban ones and do not have a sufficient number of attraction, adequate infrastructure and suprastructure to attract more tourists. In practice, there are numerous examples of rural areas, where material position of population is improved by the development of rural tourism (Mariel and Sâncraiu in Romania, family farms in Finland and Poland, Latkovac, Kosjerić in Serbia) (Podovac, et al., 2019).