Who is the wine tourist?

Both the wine and tourism industries have achieved high levels of growth within Australia in the 1990s, and are significant contributors to the GDP as invisible exports. In 1994, about 10 percent of the total international visitors made a visit to an Australian winery, an increase of 20 percent on the 1993 figures. Some researchers seek to explore wine tourism as a form of consumer behaviour in which wine lovers and those interested in wine regions travel to preferred destinations. Key researchers, in this emerging field of wine tourism, have commented on the lack of published research material available regarding the behaviour and characteristics of the winery visitor or the tourist. This paper addresses these issues by suggesting a model possessing three dimensions; purpose of visit, general tourist motivation and relationship to other tourist activities. With this model, it is possible to locate specific tourist activities, and thereby have a better understanding of what constitutes 'wine tourism'. It also considers whether or not specific cultural and geographic differences may have an impact on the segmentation of the wine tourist. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.