Rural tourism focuses on participating in a rural lifestyle. It can be a variant of ecotourism. Any village within the Maltese Islands can be a tourist attraction, and many villagers are very hospitable. Agriculture is becoming highly mechanized and therefore requires less manual labour. This is causing economic pressure on some villages, leading to an exodus of young people to urban areas.
There is however, a segment of urban population that is interested to visit the rural areas and understand their perspective. This segment has been rapidly growing in the past decade and has led to rural tourism becoming a good business prospect.