Green Innovation in Wine Tourism: Insights From the Spanish Wine Sector

Introduction

Since the early 1990s, wine tourism has garnered significant interest from researchers, initially driven by winemaking countries in the New World, as noted by Bonn et al. (2018). These countries spearheaded the generation of scientific knowledge in this research area. However, Old World wine-producing countries are increasingly recognizing the role of wine tourism in mitigating domestic wine consumption decline and reliance on wine exports, as Gómez et al. (2019) have pointed out. Additionally, this activity is acknowledged as an opportunity for diversification in the wine business and meeting new market demands in an environment that is competitive, technological, and international.

Australia, ranking as the fifth largest wine-producing region globally, attracts over eight million tourists to its wineries annually, including more than one million international wine tourists, a figure that has seen a threefold increase over two decades (Wine Australia, 2020). In the United States, California's Napa Valley alone contributed $54.8 billion to the state economy and supported 875,000 direct and indirect jobs in 2021 (Wine Institute, 2021). In Spain, the focus of this research, wine tourism is strategically important for winery management, attracting over one and a half million wine tourists in 2021 through its 34 wine routes (Wine Routes Tourism Observatory, 2021).

Wine tourism is conceptualized diversely. Some academics, like Bruwer and Alant (2009), view it as a journey aimed at exploring wineries, wine regions, and local traditions. Others, such as Getz and Brown (2006), regard it as a cultural experience where wine and heritage intertwine, a strategy for regional development, and a channel for wine distribution. In this study, wine tourism is perceived as an activity linked to the enjoyment of vineyards, wine, and wineries, aiming to enhance the competitiveness of wineries (acting as a direct wine sales channel), support territorial development (benefiting the area where the activity occurs), and foster innovation (by offering new products to the market).

According to Gómez et al. (2019), current research on wine tourism encompasses several key areas: territorial development, wine routes, the behavior of wine tourists, the wine tasting and winery experience, the development of theoretical models, wine-related events and festivals, and strategies for wine marketing and promotion. Wine tourism can also boost a winery's innovation capacity, necessitating the modernization of equipment, adaptation to new trends, enhancement of wine quality, commercial skills improvement, and creation of tourism products, as Booyens (2020) suggests. Despite its significance, the link between wine tourism and organizational innovation remains underexplored in literature, even though this relationship is crucial for the future viability of wineries and their respective regions. This research seeks to bridge this gap, exploring the connection between wine tourism and sustainability, specifically examining if wine tourism influences the development of green product and process innovations in wineries.

In the competitive global market, wineries face the challenge of innovating to sustain a competitive edge over time, a point emphasized by Fernández-Olmos et al. (2021). Innovation in the wine sector is increasingly aligning with environmental management principles. Innovations related to environmental protection can enhance the economic, social, and environmental profitability of wineries and combat challenges like water scarcity, energy shortages, and global warming, thus ensuring the sector's survival, as indicated by Signori et al. (2017). Wineries are recognized as developing green innovations when they show sustainable behavior through radical or incremental improvements in their products and/or processes, thereby enhancing competitiveness while benefiting the environment and society (Booyens, 2020).