Wine tourism product clubs as a way to increase wine added value: the case of Spain

Francisco José Del Campo Gomis, David López Lluch, José Miguel Sales Civera, Asunción M Agulló Torres, Margarita Brugarolas, Mollá-Bauzá, áfrica Martínez Poveda, Fermín Camacho de los Ríos, Antonio Miguel Nogués PedregalDepartament of Agrienvironmental Economics, Universidad Miguel Hernández, Campus Universitario de Orihuela-Desamparados, Orihuela (Alicante), SpainAbstract: The objective of this paper is to analyze how the wine tourism product clubs work in Spain and their importance for Spanish wine tourism. A tourism product club is a product development partnership established and led by the tourism industry stakeholders including small- and/or medium-sized companies. The group pools its resources to develop new marketready products or to increase the value of existing ones. Lodging companies, tour operators, administrators of tourism facilities, tourist associations, government, other companies of the sector and, even, nontourist companies can participate as members of a tourism product club. Following this model, wine tourism can contribute to create a wine tourism product club. In Spain the international promotion of tourist products is carried out through the Turespa a website. The wine tourism product club, The Wine Routes of Spain, is one of the wine tourism product clubs developed by the Spanish government. It is an ambitious project that began in 2001. Nevertheless, other Spanish regions have created more wine tourism product clubs in order to develop their own wine tourism industry such as “Divinum vitae – Where the pleasues are born” created in Castilla–La Mancha in 2006.Keywords: wine, tourism, product club, Spain