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THE "AGRITURIST QUALITY" MARK


The “Agriturist Quality Mark” granted to holiday farms certified according to the standards outlined by Quark and Agriturist and monitored by Quark has appeared for the first time on the recent 2005 issue of the Agriturist Guide as well as on the web site of the Association www.agriturist.it.

Why an “Agriturist Quality Mark”?
Riccardo Ricci Curbastro, President of Agriturist, explains that: “Besides the current regulations encouraging a strong connection of the farm holiday activity with local agriculture, food/wine culture and natural resources, we also believe that additional in-house standards of excellence can represent a valuable quality enhancement tool and guarantee a higher visibility on the market to the associated farms. As regards the guests the “Agriturist Quality” mark represents a sort of “word-of-mouth” advertising in the form of suggestions from friends who have enjoyed their holiday in one of our farms. Furthermore, as far as the certification is concerned, the audits performed by a non-Agriturist “third” authority are aimed at verifying the appropriate and objective compliance with carefully selected requirements. The reliability of the mark is therefore much more significant.

How can the “Agriturist Quality Mark” be obtained?
By becoming members of Agriturist, i.e. by complying with the main quality standards pursued by the Association. Candidates are required to perform a self-assessment test to verify the compliance with the 72 requirements provided for by our standards, 46 of which are mandatory and 26 optional (at least 40% of the latter must be met). Finally, after a careful examination and approval of the supplied documentation by the Quality Mark Committee, they are required to pay the annual membership fee (quality is an investment and those who invest are willing to perform internal audits as well as to accept external inspections for the success of their investment) and are subject to a yearly inspection. Our certified farms are constantly informed through dissemination activities about possible new quality requirements to be envisaged by our standards and are required to perform a self-audit every six months and submit the results to the Quality Mark Committee for approval.