Farm Tourism

Online Agritourism Course: Farm Business Planning and Development

• Self-paced training in farm tourism | Learn about farm tourism, agritourism management, farm tours, accommodation, events, marketing, customer care, safety and business planning.
• 8 lessons | Written assignments | Practical exercises | Self-assessment quizzes | Assignments marked by experienced and expert tutors.
• Increase your revenue stream | Offer tourist activities | Special events | Sell farm produce | Create a cafe or restaurant | Offer accommodation | Increase farm sustainability.

Lesson Structure

There are 8 lessons in this course:

1. The Scope and Nature of Rural and Agricultural Tourism
   • Background and History of Farm Tourism
   • Forms of Agribusiness for Managers and Farmers
   • Agritourism Beyond the Farm
   • Types of Agricultural Tourism
   • Possible Issues
   • Animal Welfare
2. Creating an Agritourism Setting
   • Planning Your Offering
   • Resource Management
   • Selecting Target Markets – Market Segmentation
   • Marketing Approaches
   • Legal and Health & Safety Requirement
3. Managing an Agritourism Business
   • Managing the Physical Resources
   • Managing People
   • Setting up and Running a Farm Shop
4. Agricultural Tourism Accommodation
   • Styles of Accommodation
   • Costing Accommodation
   • Maintenance
   • Farm Tours and Activities
   • Identifying Major Target Groups
   • Tours Within the Farm
   • Tour Schedules and Bookings
5. Designing and Conducting Tours and Activities
   • Creating and Delivering Activities
   • Creating Activities Outside the Farm – Mobile & Online
6. Agritourism Events
   • Types of Agricultural Events
   • Planning for an Agricultural Event
   • Phases of Delivering an Agricultural Event
   • Dealing with Event Issues
   • Managing Visitor Access
7. Marketing and Promoting an Agritourism Business
   • Introduction to Customer Relationships
   • Customer Care Policy
   • Customer Care – Levels of Involvement
   • Effective Communication
   • Dealing with Complaints
   • Self-Evaluation
   • Maximising Customer Service
   • Importance of Market Research
   • Analysing Costs and Benefits
8. Special Project - PBL – Design a Farm Tour Activity Problem-Based Learning Project

Aims

• Determine agritourism prospects for a property or wider community in a rural area.
• Identify and plan development of potential agritourism attractions.
• Explain critical tasks that require management in an agritourism enterprise.
• Compare options for providing accommodation facilities and services for agricultural tourism.
• Explain some of the considerations for designing and conducting various activities for agricultural tourism, including farm tours.
• Explore the diverse activities possible for agritourism and your region and globally.
• Identify the most appropriate agritourism marketing tools to effectively promote your business.
• Create and present a plan with specific strategies for integrating an element of farm tourism into the operation of an existing agricultural business.

What You Will Do

• Find and investigate marketing materials that promote agritourism.
• Observe behaviours of the animals in agritourism and consider the animal welfare.
• Identify potential hazards in agribusiness including how event organisers mitigate hazards.
• Perform a S.W.O.T. analysis to help identify the events Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats in an agritourism business.
• Investigate the creation, sales or service of a food product related to an agribusiness, such as a café, food truck or road-side stall.
• Research how and where you might go to recruit staff for your business including seasonal workers such as backpackers or fruit pickers.
• Consider the physical and safety resources required to run an agribusiness.
• Identify utilities and furnishings that you both consider to be essential and non-essential.
• Identify of costs associated with the accommodation (budget, intermediate and luxury) and estimate amounts for each.
• Explore and experience virtual or mobile farm tour activities.
• Create a mind map for an agritourism event that you would like to run.
• Identify the apparent success of an agritourism attraction based on observations such as potential income and public interest.
• Research examples of advertising for agribusiness events in your area (billboards, signs, pamphlets, tv or radio advertisements, email etc) and conduct a cost benefit analysis, considering things like longevity, reach, target audience and monetary cost.
• Integrate theoretical information to derive sensible solutions to potential problems involved in integrating farm tourism.

Frequently Asked Questions

What farm tourism concepts can you suggest?

As a relatively new part of the wider tourism sector, farm tourism is a great way to enable the agricultural community to diversify what they are offering and to develop new revenue streams. This can be extremely important as a way of supplementing a farm income through tourism activities, and can be a very viable way of increasing farm sustainability.

These are some of the ways in which farms can expand their reach:

• Offering accommodation - from yurts to luxury lodges
• Developing farm tours
• Creating special events e.g. food tasting, educational classes
• Working with external events companies to rent out land
• Selling farm produce to the public
• Creating a cafe or restaurant 

This course takes you through a vast array of different ideas so, if you are:

• A farmer looking to expand their offer
• Business owners looking to work with farmers on joint ventures
• Land owners wanting to utilise their land more effectively
• Someone who already has a tourism offer but wants to manage it more effectively

then this is the course for you!