Demande de séjour touristique en espace rural et vecteurs de valorisation marchande d’aménités naturelles et patrimoniales 1

– The empirical analysis of tourists demand for rural areas received little attention from literature in tourism economics. In this study, the discrete choice experiment method was adapted to analyze the demand for short days around the Gironde estuary. The results of an on-line survey launched in 2011 show that the individuals responding to the questionnaire prefer a natural adventure tour and they are ready to spend for as much as for the wine tasting and wineries cultural heritage tour. However, the future tourists ask for an access to the most authentic and famous natural amenities of the destination: here the estuary’s islands and the riparian marshes landscapes. To benefit from these landscapes, they prefer a collective boat trip – a highly priced activity – to free use of walking trail through the wetland landscape. The use of the monetary valuation of the benefit of public funding for inland waterway transport infrastructure was afterward discussed.