Proceedings: 3rd International Conference on Food and Agricultural Economics: RISK MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS IN RURAL TOURISM IN LATVIA

As project management practiceexpandedin national and nongovernmental organizations in Latvia, the role of various project-related activities increased. Latvia is a Member State of the EU that obtains EU funding and implements a lot of EU co-funded projects in various industries of the national economy, including rural tourism. In Latvia, rural tourism is defined as a kind of tourism aimed at offering tourists opportunities to rest or use tourist accommodation facilities in countryside based on local social, cultural and natural resources. Implementing a project involves potential problems or risks that can affect the pace of the project implementation. Rural tourism projects are exposed to both industry-specific risks and classical financial, technological, administrative, human resource, fraud and legal risks. National institutions, associations and countless private entrepreneurs that have received EU funding for their project proposals under support programsdeal with project implementation. The association PierigasPartneriba, the administrations of Kurzeme planning region and Vidzemeplanning region, the association Rural Traveler etc. could be referred to as one of the largest project implementers in terms of amount of funding involved. Risk management is a component of project management that deals with a successful and effective project implementation pace; therefore, it is important to identify how to minimize every potential risk. The aim of the paper is to identify risk management problems and solutions in rural tourism in Latvia based onananalysis of relevant research investigations. A content analysis revealed main risk management problems and solutions to the problems. A solution could be found to most of the problems with rural tourism projects even if a risk occurs unexpectedly, and a solution is easier to find to a timely identified risk, as well as more time is available for finding the solution.