Wine Tourism Experience and Consumer Behavior: The Case of Sicily

Wine tourist behavior-based research is essential to the development of wine tourism and to help wine producers to manage wine tourist demand. Wine tourism has increased substantially in the last decade throughout the whole Italian peninsula. Sicily, which represents an area becoming ever more a center of attraction concerning wine tourism, so far lacks research regarding winery visits and wine tourists in general. This article focuses on the wine tourism experience and consumer behavior, aiming to explore attitudes and characteristics of wine tourists in Sicily. To better understand the wine tourism phenomenon a survey was carried out in 16 member wineries of the Movimento Turismo del Vino, using a self-administered questionnaire. This research is exploratory and the results are very similar to those observed in other surveys. Hence, the Sicilian wine tourists are likely to correspond to the wine tourist’s profile defined on the basis of similar research.