Rural Entrepreneurship and the Formalisation of Rural Tourism in Marginal Destinations: Challenges and Perspectives

Greece has engaged in intensive exploitation of its mineral wealth (Melfos & Voudouris, 2012) that is diverse in terms of its quality, quantity, and variety (Eliopoulos & Economou-Eliopoulos, 2000). The mining of major deposits of lignite, bauxite, nickel, aluminium, chromium, iron–manganese, gold–silver, and many other minerals and ores continues to this day (Skarpelis, 2002; Tsirambides & Filippidis, 2012). Reserving large tracts of rural land enables public entities or private-sector companies to become established in these areas and start mining. Active quarries and mining sites occupy over 400,000 acres of rural land, which is an area equal to 0.35% of the country’s territory (Tzeferi, 2018). In many cases, the needs of mining led to razing entire rural villages to the ground, forcing their inhabitants to move to other settlements or migrate to urban centres (Demogianni, 2019). After the expropriation of their premises for resource exploitation purposes, small individual enterprises that operated in these rural settlements had to close their business activities (Demogianni, 2019). Simultaneously, large groups of private or public corporations established themselves in these areas for the exploitation and processing of mineral resources. Because the mining companies usually process their raw materials at the deposit location, many auxiliary businesses have been operating next to them, thereby creating an employment dynamic in the region (Lampou et al., 2021).