Winery Features Considered Significant for Visiting Choice

Wine tourism is a particular type of alternative tourism that is gaining increasing attention, although it is relatively new to Greeks who have previously focused on Sea, Sun, and Sand (3S) tourism. This study explores what elements of a winery, and its associated area are important to wine tourists when selecting a winery to visit. In addition, winery visitors are divided into groups based on the elements they consider important. For this purpose, a questionnaire containing 47 elements of a winery and its surroundings was distributed online to wine consumers. Of the initial 854 valid questionnaires collected, about half of the sample (N = 430) had visited a winery, and it was from this sample that the data on the 47 elements were analyzed. The analysis initially revealed that the most important elements were “The winery offers tour of the winery (processing-production area, cellars, etc.)”, “The winery offers wines at retail”, and “The winery offers a vineyard tour” “Tour of the winery (production area, cellars, etc.)”, “Sale of Products at Retail” and “Tour of the vineyards”. Factor analysis of these 47 elements produced a four-dimensional solution that was used to group wine tourists into homogeneous groups. Segmentation analysis resulted in a three- segment solution, namely “The demanding winery visitors”, “The core-centered winery visitors”, and “The do not care winery visitors”. Marketing implications are discussed.