The paper describes the role of rural tourism for the sustainable development of rural areas and stresses out the importance of strategic approach in the planning of their development. The author identifies core problems, which eliminate their use and disable individual strategies set by some entrepreneurs in rural tourism. Concretely it is the absence of developing projects and focus on the development of individual villages. Then it is the lack of will to cooperate, local resources are not effectively used and the local community is not adequately involved.