Cuadernos de Turismo, 40, (2017), 665-668 Cuadernos de Turismo, nº 40, (2017); pp. 665-668 Universidad de Murcia ISSN: 1139-7861 eISSN: 1989-4635 ACCESS TO RURAL DESTINATIONS: A PERSPECTIVE FOR A SPATIAL TOURISM PLANNING IN AN INLAND REGION (CASTILLA-LA MANCHA) Alfonso Fernández-Arroyo López-Manzanares Héctor S. Martínez Sánchez-Mateos Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha Alfonso.FArroyo@uclm.es, HectorS.Martinez@uclm.es The article proposes a typology of touristic areas, based on functionality and with the aim to assess the possibilities for touristic development on rural areas according to its location concerning the actual demand markets. There is a gap in the literature for this approach, where origin, destination, and its connection flows are studied in relation to locations. The motivation of this study are the recent changes in touristic trends, together with the outstanding growth in mobility and reduction of travel times. These elements have determined the transition from a predominant tourism for masses towards new touristic patterns (Martínez Quintana, 2006: 94-95), also linked to social changes (Cohen, 2005). They have an important influence over the spatial variable (Hiernaux, 2006; Pearce, 2014; Pillet, 2015), opening a way to re-interpret the connection of inland rural areas, essentially focusing on the touristic travel by road. The outcome of the empirical procedure proposed allow us to build an origin- destination matrix with the distance-time vectors between the nodes emitting flows and inland destinations in Castilla-La Mancha, taking as origins the main cities (market areas) in a national scale. These space-time relations yield as a result four types of market areas with specific touristic dynamics according to their degree of accessibility: – Areas of urban leisure; placed close to agglomerations and important cities and can develop activities limited on time. – Areas of intensive leisure; the touristic activity is framed within one day with no need to sleep over one night. The estimation is that travel time does not exceed 45 minutes (90 minutes round trip). – Areas of alternative tourism in rural environments; in these there is a need of lodg- ing and services to meet the demand of visitors. It is estimated a travel time of 90 minutes (180 minutes round trip).