Designing Experiential Tourism Strategies in Rural Areas: A Systemic and Data-Driven Framework

Rural areas across Europe are increasingly affected by long-term processes of demographic decline, economic marginalisation, and territorial fragmentation. In this context, tourism is often considered a potential driver of development; however, conventional tourism models have shown limited capacity to generate lasting benefits for fragile rural territories. In recent years, experience-based tourism models has emerged as an alternative paradigm, emphasising authenticity, local resources, and meaningful interactions between visitors and host communities. Despite growing academic interest, existing approaches to this field in rural areas remain fragmented and rarely translated into integrated, operational frameworks capable of supporting territorial decision-making. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a systemic design framework aimed at supporting the strategic development of tourism initiatives in rural contexts. The framework integrates territorial analysis, assessment of the local tourism offer, and systemic design tools within a coherent analytical process. Its objective is to move beyond isolated tourism products and toward the construction of territorial strategies grounded in local systems of resources, actors, and practices. The methodological approach adopted in this paper was originally developed in the framework of the SYSTOUR Interreg Europe project, and is here applied to the Lea-Artibai area (Basque Country, Spain). By constructing and analysing a knowledge base of tourism initiatives and integrating systemic design and evaluation tools, the approach supports the identification of leverage points and strategic directions for sustainable tourism development. The results show that a systemic and place-based perspective improves the understanding of these initiatives as a relational and co-designed process rather than an isolated product.