Rural tourism has been seen during the last decades as a means for economic development of sensitive localities, especially in rural areas. However, little research has been conducted on the sustainability of the development induced by tourism activities in rural areas, and even so, with contradictory results. Our paper investigated how tourism impacted on the sustainable development of rural localities, focusing on three composite indexes: demographic stability, public utilities, and socio-economic sustainability. Mann–Whitney U test was used to determine the differences on each of the above-mentioned indexes between the rural localities with tourist arrivals and those without. The results showed that there is a significant positive effect of tourism on rural areas translated into higher values of all the indexes analyzed. This study brings valuable contributions to both academics and policy-makers: on one hand, it provides new insights into the impact of tourism activities; on the other hand, it offers valuable information to decisional actors regarding development strategies.

During the last decades, tourism activities were promoted by local and regional policy-makers as a universal solution for rural areas’ suffering from massive depopulation, technological delay, or economical struggles. A large debate flourished in the literature on whether and to what extent tourism could play a role in supporting rural localities. Some valid evidence was brought by researchers backing the cure-all role of tourism, as well as by those who criticized the limited, or even negative, impact of tourism on rural areas. However, following the economic crisis of 2008, the attention switched to a newer and more relevant topic: Does tourism increase the resilience performance of rural areas? Our paper tries to answer this question by focusing on both economic and demographic resilience, which are the most sensitive sectors during an important shock. Following a detailed territorial breakdown according to a twofold typology (spatial accessibility and number of employees), correlations were used to determine the impact of tourism activities on building resilience for each type of rural territory. The results indicated a positive effect of tourism activities upon economic and demographic resilience performance in highly accessible rural areas, while in peripheral areas, the impact was insignificant. This paper provides new insights into the various roles that tourism plays in rural areas and offers suggestions for local policy-makers.