An Alternative to Sea-Sun-Sand Tourism

In the late 1970s Cohen argued that attention was being overly focused on tourism's negative effects. After that, several types of non-mass tourism such as 'alternative tourism' and 'ecotourism' were advocated as being less damaging to society and environment. In recent years, rural tourism has attracted a steadily increasing level of research attention, stimulated by two factors. First, tourism demand for rural areas is growing. Second, rural tourism has arrived on the political-economic agenda, the hope being that tourism business can alleviate the consequences of a decline in traditional means of rural employment. Varying degrees of rural areas tend to have four main qualities: relatively low physical densities of people, buildings and activities; less social and cultural heterogeneity; less economic diversity; and a comparative physical isolation from general economic, social and political networks. With the aim of improving the possibilities of alternative tourism in Antalya and accelerating the progress in rural areas by means of tourism, mountain villages are attempted to be brought in tourism guaranteed that all its local, social and cultural values kept. Mountain villages were settled by means of an architectural concern that gives priority to natural conditions and that is conscious of human-centered value judgments. By means of this study, necessity of regional protection that covers all the local, social and cultural entities is emphasized, and the importance of involvement within tourism in order to accelerate regional development is discussed.