Rural tourism and rural tourism management under the concept of tourism product diversificaton: A case study for Şirince

In parallel with the economic, politic and technologic developments in the world; due to noticing the benefits that tourism sector supplies, the rivalry between the countries ascended; international tourism destination changes seen according to the varying desires and needs; and a new tourist profile appears that looks up adventure while travelling, environmentally-conscious, wonders different cultures, and chooses different touristic products. Due to developing this new touristic demand, composing new touristic products became the most important politics of touristic destinations. Rural tourism is the one of these policies.Rural tourism is a tourism type that gets more attention in Turkey and in the world moving with the sustainability approaches. Some of the villages in Turkey in which located in Marmara, Aegean and Mediterranean regions nearby the tourism centers are explored and started to visit. One of these villages is Şirince. Şirince is close to the places that have a very high potential as geographical position and famous around the worldwide in tourism like Ephesus, Artemis Temple, the Virgin Mary, St. Jain, Seven Sleepers etc. Although Şirince has the power to integrate to the other tourism types and has the high potential in terms of rural tourism, its? rural potential can not be evaluated sufficiently.In this study, by analyzing touristic product diversification of rural tourism, the local specialties of village Şirince is displayed; and by making field study; current tourism potential, strong and weak aspects of destination, opportunity and threat factors are tried to determine. Moreover, intended for rural tourism management, for determining employees of destination, the profile of employees is finded out working at rural hotels in Şirince. At the end of the study, recommendations are given for the tourism development of the region and SWOT matrix of Şirince is drawn by based on the findings.