Abstract
Rural tourism represents the tourism in rural households, as well as holidays and stays in rural areas, events, festivals, recreations, productions and sales of handicrafts, crafts and agricultural products. Rural tourism is especially suitable for the revitalisation of degraded rural areas, ensuring their sustainability in the future, through creating new work places, increasing the diversity of occupations, rural crafts, and also preserving the landscape and nature. The development of rural tourism of the Republic of Serbia could play an important role in the country’s rural development and economic development in general. Thanks to its diverse relief and preserved nature, Serbia has significant resources in rural tourism at its disposal, but the number of negative factors that prevent more intensive growth of this economic branch is not negligible at all. One of the most important problems, but not unsolvable one, is the extinction of rural settlements in Serbia.