Alberto Guerreiro
Museólogo
By definition, wine tourism, designates a set of touristic services, leisure activities and free time, dedicated to the discovery and to cultural and oenophile pleasure of vinyards and wine. The wine culture is the main theme of this product and the tourist should be able to grasp this condition during all stages of his trip whatever his position in the tourism chain of value. He must be able to “breathe” the wine culture. The enological and cultural value determines the weight of the element of wine as an axis or a dorsal vertebra of the tourist experience. The topic power of wine is important, for it is an element of great cultural value that extends to the whole wine production society and that, consequently, have enough to porto a significant amount of potential services, tourist activities and experiences.
The volume of resources in winemaking at a specific destination, which is part of the wine tourism experience, are crucial to determine the ability of a territory to attract and satisfy visitors. What distinguishes a wine territory is its cultural manifestations: architectural features of the region concerning wineries, wine cellars or properties, at village festivities, in folklore, in the way they work the soil and in the vine growth, the ways and techniques of winemaking, the storage or consumption of wine. The wine tourism product should be complex, but easily identified and recognized by tourists through the different components or elements of the touristic product's chain of value.
It is important to call attention to the fact that wine tourism must be developed according to the principles of sustainable tourism. The concept of sustainable tourism appeared in the late 1980, after World Tourism Organization have noticed that certain early tourist destinations were beginning to lose its international appeal and competitiveness due to mass tourism and its unchecked growth, since they had not taken into account environmental and social impact. The tourist capacity refers to the maximum number of people that can enjoy a region without causing unacceptable umbalances in the physical environment or the quality decline in the tourist experience. since the concept of capacity capacity is dynamic, since it depends on the planning level that was developed, will be required to action upon the infrastructure potential with appropriate management to optimize the receiving capacity of tourist places, thus avoiding intolerable adverse effects. The different agents (public entities, businesses and population) will have to share these principles and maintain a consequent behavior, which involves the need for investment in education and public awareness. The authenticity of the territory is perhaps the most crucial factor in the wine tourism experience. Compared with mass production tourism, which is directed to a different audience and that is unlikely to have an high and specialized requirement level, the wine tourism model refers to modes of production more handmade and small scaled that aim to achive as much authenticity as possible in the wine tourism experience and therefore is targeted to a market niche, very specialized and demanding. This model must adapt perfectly to the socio-economic reality of the wine regions and the structure of their productive areas in order to succeed. It is in this context that the wine tourism can and should be seen as an element of appreciation of the heritage Vineyard memory.
Bibliographic reference: Maduro, António Valério; Guerreiro, Alberto; Oliveira, Aurélio (2014), The Wine Museum of Alcobaça and industrial tourism: referential and territorial enhancer. Communication in 3rd Edicion CROSSROADS OF EUROPE – 5º EUROPEAN CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL TOURISM "Identity, Industry, and Culture”, 7-18-19-20 JUNE 2014 Ferrol – A Coruña.