Annotation

The article deals with the role and importance of agro-tourism on the basis of business activity as the fundamental for development of rural areas and social sphere in the village. The article considers the essence of agro-tourism activity, which is currently taken as a perspective direction of rural development, expanding the sphere of employment of rural population, promoting socio-economic development of villages and their infrastructure. The agro-tourism increases investment attractiveness of rural territories, provides rational use of natural resources and cultural and historical heritage, and most importantly, preservation of human potential, original traditions and customs of our ancestors.

The work studies business value in rural areas in terms of creation of new jobs and implementation of innovations, developing new markets and businesses, increased tax revenues and incomes of the population. It is emphasized that entrepreneurship is the basis for development of both separate sectors of the economy and the state as a whole. It is noted that development of small and medium--size enterprises can reduce unemployment, playing an important role in the economy, because they are more elastic, dynamical, mobile, and innovative than the large ones. It is stressed that small business is able to demonstrate its capacity for self-development, make a significant contribution to harmonization of social relations and economic prosperity of the country.

It is argued that the effective performance of agro-tourism business is based on many indicators, which functionally complement each other, stimulate the following accompanying processes that combine causation with each other. The work presents a conceptual model of the agro-tourism business development, which comprehensively demonstrates those positive changes. It is confirmed that the cluster approach, which depends on effective partnership, mutual benefit of uniting efforts of all interested parties (entrepreneurs, territorial communities, authorities) is also important for development of agro-tourism on the basis of entrepreneurship.