Improvement of Service Variety and Service Quality Management in Rural Tourism

For the last few years rural tourism was one of the fastest growing businesses in rural areas. And still rural tourism has extremely big growth potential. More and more often consumers are seeking for new products and high quality services. But Lithuanian rural tourism lacks variety of services and service quality. Studies of research done in Lithuania show that usually all rural tourism service providers offer the same services: meals, accommodation, boating, bicycle rent, or fishing. Consumers lack services such as organized trips, farm works, dance nights. Research also confirmed that consumers are not satisfied with the service quality. One of the key conditions for the development of rural tourism is to meet consumers' needs and expectations while improving quality of service. Quality of service promotes consumers' loyalty, attracts potential consumers, makes employees satisfied, and forms a proper image in the market. Those are the motivating factors for rural tourism establishments to seek high service quality and to continually improve it. The recommendation is to develop an evaluative service quality system and to apply the principles of total quality management in rural tourism business, ensuring that service meets the set standards. To stand out among competitors, rural tourism service providers have to concentrate their efforts on the development and management of people's intellect.