Rural Tourism in the Countries of Former Yugoslavia: Literature Review

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to summarize and analyze research on the development of rural tourism in the last 30 years in the countries of former Yugoslavia and the most common topics in each country. Design/Methodology – To create a systematic literature review, the authors analyzed articles from the national library information systems and Google Scholar. Based on a keyword search and content analysis, 647 research articles were identified as relevant to this study. To interpret secondary data sources, general scientific methods such as deduction and desk analysis were used. Approach – The paper aims to provide insight into recent trends in rural tourism literature regarding former Yugoslavia’s countries. A detailed review of relevant literature identified the predominant interests of authors and dominant research niches. This study focused on the scholarly perspective to study and analyze the rural tourism literature and its link with sustainable development and special forms of rural tourism. Findings – Countries that were once a part of Yugoslavia have different levels of rural tourism development and the authors research rural tourism from different perspectives. There are many authors that study rural tourism and an emerging number of those that include sustainable development of rural tourism as key. Originality of the research – This research contributes to the theory by presenting relevant literature on rural tourism in the area of former Yugoslavia. Literature reviews on rural tourism are many, but there are no papers focusing only on former Yugoslav republics or collecting data from the national library information systems and Google Scholar.