Rural tourism experiences. Land, sense and experience-scapes in quest of new tourist spaces and sustainable community development

The special issue on “Rural tourism experiences” is one outcome of the International Conference on Rural Tourism entitled “Re-inventing rural tourism and the rural tourism experience - Conserving, innovating and co-creating for sustainability” that took place in early September 2013 at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. The conference was a milestone at the end of a 3-years research project undertaken in 3 Portuguese villages (Favaios, Janeiro de Cima and Linhares da Beira), with the collaboration of 15 researches from 7 distinct Portuguese institutions, 4 research assistants and 5 master students at the University of Aveiro, and one international consultant (Bernard Lane), who critically discussed with us and confronted findings with those from diverse studies in other contexts and parts of the world.