Agritourism as an Emerging Sustainable Tourism Industry in Uzbekistan

Abstract

The primary aim is to provide a review of the benefits of agritourism for developing countries, such as the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan. This literature review discusses the importance of agritourism as a sustainable tourism strategy for the government and key stakeholders to support raising the standard of living and poverty levels of farmers and their families who are living in rural areas of Uzbekistan. The research method uses a literature review of the scientific research on agritourism in Uzbekistan. This was achieved through an extensive search of databases through the use of keywords that were collected to analyze and determine whether there were any gaps in the literature. This paper concludes that for less developed countries such as the Republic of Uzbekistan, agritourism is still in its initial stages of development and provides mainly economic benefits. This is because, in Uzbekistan, almost half of its population lives in rural areas and relies on the economic benefits of agriculture as their main source of subsistence and employment. However, in the future, there is a need to further develop new and innovative programs for agritourism businesses that can also promote the environmental and socio-cultural benefits for tourists to increase visitation to rural areas.