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Abstract
Rural tourism is a field of activation for women within the broader process
of promotion of reconstruction measures for the development of the countryside
via integrated and endogenous procedures. The running of private or
cooperative nature accommodation in rural areas and the establishment and
development of the women’s cooperatives for the better exploitation of local
products, traditions and cultural heritage comprise the main axes of
women’s involvement in the field of rural tourism activities in Greece. The
present work approaches the issue under a niche market perspective. Initially,
it presents the institutional framework supporting the respective
activities and the successive development phases of rural tourism in
Greece. It further provides three typical case study examples of respective
women’s cooperatives in Greece regarding their evolutionary process and a
number of major aspects of their profile. In the end, the cooperatives are
considered and evaluated with a view to creating, developing and maintaining
a niche market organization in rural tourism. It seems that for a number
of reasons the rapid increase of the numbers of the women’s cooperatives in
Greece has not been accompanied by the development of all those necessary
conditions that would make them successful niche market examples.