Background Rural tourism is a new product in expansion throughout Europe. It has similar features in every area, particularly in southern Europe where these policies are undergoing vigorous growth at present. However, tourism is not an innocuous business. Europe has long experience of the environmental deterioration that accompanies tourism, especially in coastal areas. The appearance of new and increasingly popular tourist destinations in the rural interior will start to apply the same pressures on these areas. The problems that can arise from tourism pressures require adequate anticipation and planning to avoid environmental deterioration and the degradation of tourist areas. This is complicated by the variety of types of tourism and the transversality of the activity covering a large number of public authorities, departments and agents. This project looks at the expanding rural tourism industry in La Rioja in Spain and the Molise region of Italy. Objectives The project posited the creation of a complete and exportable tourist management model to intervene at all levels of the rural tourism industry within a general sustainable development framework. It sought to move from a consensus on the principles of sustainable tourism to the development of specific tools for its realisation. It particularly sought to question the belief that rural tourism was automatically sustainable tourism, or whether in fact, the model of the new products was similar to those of conventional tourism. The innovative methodology was intended to cover the four basic areas of rural-tourism-related activity: planning; production; provision of services; and consumption to generate a sustainable tourism model in the highly sensitive rural environment. The project planned to draw up a new set of specific environmental indicators for rural tourism, which would be used as a basic decision-making tool when assessing risks for a territory and programming tourist activities. The project expected to catalogue the impacts of interior tourism and achieve a reduction of 20 percent in the costs of providing services. Results The project successfully carried out detailed fieldwork to map rural tourism to inform new strategies for its sustainable development. Direct observation, interviews, discussion groups and surveys targeting tourists, local site owners and specialists in the tourism sector were used to create GIS-based spatial data presented in regional maps with data on a local scale. The heating systems and energy consumption of rural houses were also analysed ecologically. The research allowed for the development of 28 municipal-level and 38 Autonomous Community-level sustainable tourism indicators. It was found that the development of tourism in rural areas tends towards concentration around town or village centres or into very specific spaces or corridors, with large gaps in between. This does not tend towards sustainability. Rural houses were largely found to be inefficient and recommendations were made for improvement. Some energy efficiency devices were installed, leading to 25 to 50 percent savings. A specific campaign disseminated good environmental practice among holiday-cottage users through travel diaries, stickers and bookmarks. This was well evaluated and 37 percent stated their environmental behaviour was positively changed as a result. Some areas were found not to possess any ‘tourist attractions’ and many local people thought that accommodation was the only real tourism product. To support the creation of new, sustainable tourism products, a new procedure for their elaboration was developed. This led to the successful testing of two new tourist products: an eight-day bicycle tour taking in regional heritage and wine cellars; and a four-day walking and gastronomic trip. An innovative idea was the creation of a Green credit Card in conjunction with a local bank. The project distributed thousands of cards to local people accompanied by a substantial advertising campaign. However, although it served extremely well at awareness raising, there was no real demand for the card. Although the project found both house owners and tourists to support the principles of sustainable tourism, a big challenge for its future development was identified in that only 15 percent of owners felt it would give them a competitive advantage since tourists demonstrated that they are not really prepared to pay extra for sustainability measures.