Wine tourism product clubs as a way to increase wine added value: the case of Spain

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyze how the wine tourism product clubs work in Spain and their importance for Spanish wine tourism. A tourism product club is a product development partnership established and led by the tourism industry stakeholders including small-and/or medium-sized companies. The group pools its resources to develop new marketready products or to increase the value of existing ones. Lodging companies, tour operators, administrators of tourism facilities, tourist associations, government, other companies of the sector and, even, nontourist companies can participate as members of a tourism product club. Following this model, wine tourism can contribute to create a wine tourism product club. In Spain the international promotion of tourist products is carried out through the Turespaña website. The wine tourism product club, The Wine Routes of Spain, is one of the wine tourism product clubs developed by the Spanish government. It is an ambitious project that began in 2001. Nevertheless, other Spanish regions have created more wine tourism product clubs in order to develop their own wine tourism industry such as "Divinum vitae-Where the pleasues are born" created in Castilla-La Mancha in 2006.

Integrating a Local Asset/Resource into Tourism and Leisure Offering: The Case of Tea Resources in Longwu Town, Zhejiang Province, China

“…A very good example of themed partnerships are the product clubs that are created by tourism stakeholders at local/destination level [2]. Del Campo Gomis et al [50] suggest the following definition of a product club in an article about the 'Wine Routes' of Spain: "A tourism product club is a group of companies that have agreed to work together to develop new tourism products or increase the value of existing products and collectively review the existing problems that hinder profitable development of tourism. Tourism product clubs share an interest in a segment of the tourism industry and aim to increase the variety and quality of products available (packages, events, activities, experiences) and/or develop new products for a specific market segment.…”

“…The group is committed to conducting a program of development of tourism products for a period of at least three to five years." [50]…”

Opportunities and challenges in the contribution of wine routes to wine tourism in Italy – A stakeholders' perspective of development

“…In fact, their nature of amplifiers of the interaction between wine business and wine tourism (Bruwer and Alant, 2009;Lavandoski et al, 2016b) can exploit the growing success throughout the world of tourist orientation towards wine and food preferences (Peira et al, 2017;Ellis et al, 2018;Eşitti and Buluk, 2018). Similarly, by virtue of Wine Routes great achievements are possible not only for territories (as tourism destinations), but also for wines (del Campo Gomis et al, 2010). In fact, the function of Wine Routes as vehicles of brand identity (Bruwer, 2003;Vlachvei and Notta, 2009;Bruwer and Johnson, 2010;Vlachvei et al, 2012;Lewis et al, 2015) can increase wine notoriety, consideration, and reputation (Pucci et al, 2016;Faraoni et al, 2017), naturally only if a coherent positioning is acquired (Zanni, 2004).…”

Tourism Product Clubs: Theory, Added Value and Practical Implications

“…• "a group of companies that have agreed to work together to develop new tourism products or increase the value of existing products and collectively review the existing problems that hinder profitable development of tourism" (Secretaria de Estado para el Turismo de Mexico, 2006, in Del Campo Gomis et al 2010 • a strategic alliance between public bodies responsible for planning tourism development, tourism service providers and institutions managing the resources on which a tourism product is based with the aim to jointly develop a tourism product through planning, promotion, commercialization and evaluation of the product itself (Blanco 2013) • "a management and planning tool where a group of companies and organizations agree, in the framework of public-private collaboration, to work together in an organized way, with the objective of developing new products or increasing the value of existing ones, for a specific market segment. The many definitions above suggest two common concepts; the first one is partnership and the second one collaboration of different stakeholders on the tourism market.…”