Wine tourism, as we know it today, has really developed since the early 2000s. Of course, there have been precursors since the 1980s. Let’s remember that the Maison du Tourisme et des Vins de Pauillac was already open at that time, including on Sundays, under the impetus of Jean-Michel Cazes, who was its president. This was an exception in the Bordeaux wine region! But before going into more detail about the evolution of this sector, let’s try to define what wine tourism is.
If we were to take a look at the definitions proposed by professionals, we would be surprised by the differences in conception around this word: some would tell you about foreign visitors staying in luxurious hotels and great wine lovers, others would evoke visitors who take advantage of their stay along the Atlantic coast to discover a winery, taste and buy wine, before drinking it around the barbecue in the evening, others would mention participatory workshops to blend a wine to one’s liking or commented electric bike rides followed by tastings,… They would all be right.
A MULTIFACETED ACTIVITY
As early as 2001, the French Tourism Engineering Agency (AFIT), which no longer exists – its missions having been taken over by Atout France, France’s tourism development agency – included nine types of activities in its definition of wine tourism:
- wine routes,
- wine trails and hiking paths,
- organized tours or stays in the vineyard,
- oenology courses,
- visits and other services of the wineries,
- wine museums and eco-museums,
- wine center in the different appellation,
- parties and festivals,
- trade shows, local wine fairs, auctions.
The AFIT also indicated the main motivations of wine tourism:
- to increase the volume of direct wine sales,
- to increase the general volume of tourism in the wine regions.
Today, if economic motivations remain important, wine tourism also allows to work on one’s image and communication, to share about one’s profession, to renew one’s customer file or to distinguish oneself from other winegrowers.[1]
In tourism, a difference is made between a tourist and a visitor: the tourist spends at least one night away from home while the visitor returns home in the evening. But for the vineyard, aren’t both essential? If some people doubted it, the pandemic and the containment have shown to what extent the two complement each other and contribute to the balance of a wine tourism activity.
1- In Les modèles économiques de l’œnotourisme, In extenso TCH for Atout France, June 2022.
VISITORS AND TOURISTS, BOTH ARE ESSENTIAL FOR THE VINEYARD
Indeed, in France, in the Gironde, in Bordeaux as in the Napa Valley, in Spain or in Italy, visitors are essentially nationals and even people who live less than an hour away. They are also the ones who can most easily buy wine, beyond the wine tourism activity, since they travel mainly with their personal vehicle.
In France, of the 7.5 million wine tourists counted in 2009[2], 60% are French. Of the 3.1 million wine tourists in the region Nouvelle Aquitaine[3] in 2018, 65% are French[4]. Of the 3.85 million visitors to Napa Valley in 2018, 80.8% are Americans[5] and of the estimated 14 million visits to Italy in 2017, 62% are Italians[6].
However, we should not neglect the importance of foreign tourists, who are proportionally more numerous in the vineyards than in the rest of the tourist industry. In Gironde, for example, 38% of tourists in the vineyards are foreigners, compared to 14% of foreigners in the department’s overall tourist numbers[7]. Foreigners are the ones who spend the most (83.6€ spent on average per day and per person during a stay in the region Nouvelle Aquitaine for a foreigner, compared to 64.9€ for a French visitor[8] and who participate in the good filling rate of the increasingly numerous accommodations in the wineries or nearby.
But what we saw during the pandemic was that while the number of visitors was lower in the wineries, the level of spending was the same or even higher. Indeed, as soon as it was possible to move away from home, the wine destinations were at the top of the list of desires: possibility to be outside, wish of spending time together, commitment to purchase local products,… And the wineries had known how to adapt their offers for the customers of proximity, in particular with open air food court or picnic areas to spend a day outside in a pleasant environment.
AN OFFER THAT HAS CHANGED CONSIDERABLY IN THE LAST TEN YEARS
For a long time, the wine tourism offer of the New World countries was taken as an example: wine estates built including visitors path, special rooms dedicated to wine tours, often sumptuous boutiques, multiple activities with restaurants and hotels on site, wine lovers’ clubs maintained by the estates. All these options already existed, in Napa Valley for example, at the beginning of the 2000s.
The structuring in France was later, but the offer has nothing to envy to its main competitors. Today, there are famous hotel-restaurants throughout the French vineyards. Let’s take two examples in different vineyards: one of the precursors in France, the Sources de Caudalie next to Château Smith Haut Lafitte in the Bordeaux region, or the Domaine Henri Bourgeois in Sancerre with its hotel-restaurant in the village of Chavignol.
The types of offers have diversified. Even if people still come to the vineyards to visit the cellars, taste and buy wine, today they can ride an electric bike, create their own wine, learn all about the culture and civilization of wine (La Cité du vin), taste goat cheese, discover the associations between wine and chocolate, do an escape game in the vineyards or even a police road trip, to name but a few examples.
2- Became 10 million in 2016 (source Atout France).
3- In L’œnotourisme en Nouvelle-Aquitaine, CRT NA, 2019.
4- Total number of visitors to the vineyards in New Aquitaine, 4.1 million, for 10.2 million visits, CRTNA, 2019.
5- In The Napa Valley visitor, Visit Napa Valley, 2018.
6- In 13th report Tourism and wine in Italy, 2017.
7- In L’œnotourisme en Gironde, Gironde tourisme, 2019.
8- In La fréquentation touristique en région Nouvelle-Aquitaine, CRTNA/BVA, 2019-2020, p. 70.
STRUCTURING SUPPORTED BY PARAPUBLIC TOURISM ORGANIZATIONS
This structuring owes much to the work done within the club, then the cluster, after the wine tourism pole of Atout France. All of France’s wine-producing regions (17 identified by Atout France to facilitate international promotion) come together to share their expertise, conduct studies, get to know their customers better and carry out promotional activities together.
It is in this context that the Vignobles & Découvertes label was created in 2009. This label “is awarded for a period of three years by Atout France, after recommendation by the Conseil supérieur de l’œnotourisme, to a wine tourism destination offering multiple and complementary tourism products (accommodation, restaurants, cellar visits and tastings, museums, events, etc.) and allowing customers to organize their stay more easily and to be guided towards qualified services. With this label, today, 7650 service providers are identified in France in 72 destinations. In Gironde, 6 territories have been awarded the label, which represents 1,008 recognized service providers[9]. One of the contributions of this approach is to have the wine and tourism worlds work together, which is an essential prerequisite for the success of wine tourism in a territory.
Today, a federation, currently chaired by Michel Chapoutier, coordinates the work of all these destinations and organizes each year, the “Fascinating Vignobles & Découvertes weekend” so that all of France buzzes with a dense offer of activities and festivities in the vineyards on the same day.
We also can recall the local commitments that have built the wine tourism we know today. Let’s mention two examples: it is because the Bordeaux tourist office launched in the early 2000s the first offers of bus tours in the vineyard for individuals that the market of organized tours from Bordeaux that we know today has developed. It is thanks to the commitment of the Aquitaine regional tourism committee, and then of Nouvelle Aquitaine, that we have data on customers in our region, which is often non-existent in other French wine regions.
While these developments are remarkable, wine tourism is nonetheless faced with new challenges.
THE CHALLENGES OF WINE TURISM
Wine tourism in France has evolved a lot; the offer has changed in quality, in quantity and in all wine-producing areas. While the number of wine tourists has also increased, the offer has developed more rapidly. Everyone must therefore carefully evaluate their target customers and their objectives, so that the wine tourism activity is not disappointing for those who set it up.
Three challenges must be met today:
- That of the customer relationship. Too many estates do not adapt their offer to their visitors. For example, they try to welcome foreigners when their offer is more adapted to a local clientele. Better identifying their specificity, their potential and their customers, maintaining a relationship with them, this may seem obvious, yet much remains to be done, since studies show that while 59% of those who have visited the region want to come back, only 22% think they will keep in touch with the producers they met[10].
- The marketing of the offer. Private websites are appearing to help visitors find and buy the offer that suits them. Online proposals are also often made by tourist offices in wine-producing areas. The national website run by Atout France, visitfrenchwine.com, also allows visitors to get an idea of what is available nationally. However, making the offer known and marketing it remain major challenges.
- The evolution of demand in favor of an environmentally committed offer. On this subject, the evolution already exists with new visits in the vineyard emphasizing the transformation of practices. Moreover, the trophies of wine tourism at the national level or the Best of Wine Tourism in the region Nouvelle Aquitaine have categories dedicated to it. But beyond a specific offer, many visitors today want to know more about the cultivation practices and are no longer satisfied with visits to wineries or tastings, but demand to begin their discovery with their feet in the vineyard. The challenge is great to enhance the increasingly important transformation of the vineyard today.
In conclusion, France is a major country for wine tourism because this activity, if it is practiced by 20% of wine lovers who build their stays around wine tours, has become an activity for visitors in general (80% of vineyard tourists) who, in addition to museums, villages, cities, castles or amusement parks, also visit a wine estate, as a tourist activity. France is also a major country for wine tourism because in France, as in Italy – unlike in the New World – our offer is part of our historical heritage, of our identity and is in villages, in places that offer, beyond the vineyard, a range of activities, especially outdoor activities, which are widely popular today. After twenty years of structuring, wine tourism, now grown up, must think about its future and remain creative to continue to seduce the visitors of today and tomorrow.
