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1. Introduction
With the growth and strengthening of wine tourism in the New Wine World regions, many efforts to understand and draw on this field have been taking place over the past years (Pelegrín-Borondo et al., 2019). Many wine regions and tourism destinations have realized that the benefits of wine tourism extend well beyond the cellar door to virtually all areas of the regional economy and into the urban areas that generate most wine tourists (Carlsen, 2004).
Wine tourism is an interesting way to improve the income of wine producers as a complementary activity to wine production (Martinho, 2021). Significant advantages are driven from visits to wineries: an opportunity to try new products, build brand loyalty, increase margins, additional sales outlet, marketing intelligence and a means of educating consumers about wine (Cohen and Ben-Nun, 2009).
The study of the tourists’ wine tourism experience and motivations has been central in wine tourism research and has gained attention among professionals. Travel motives and motivations have been used as key variables for market segmentation studies on tourist experiences (Oh et al., 2007). Wine tourism researchers have recognized that the creation of pleasurable, memorable, educational and sensorial experience is the raison d’être for developing wine tourism (Carlsen and Boksberger, 2015).
Thanks to wine tourism, the Mexican winemaking sector has found a platform for exhibition. Certainly, the development of wine tourism in Mexico is recent, compared to other European or South American countries, but it has experienced unusual rapid growth that places some Mexican wine regions on the map of emerging destinations with greater international projection (De Jesús and Thomé, 2019).
In the past 20 years, the wine tourism sector in Mexico has become a relevant topic for private organizations, state and federal government institutions, entrepreneurs and winemakers who seek not only to promote and improve the wine sector but also to support the integral development of the wine tourism through holistic programs such as the Mexican wine routes.
The identification of the main criteria with which to segment consumers in the market has relevance for a wine marketing strategy; therefore, this study has the aim to identify the segments of the wine tourism experience in Mexico that drive the marketing strategies of the stakeholders in wine tourism destinations.