Forecasting the development of wine tourism: a case study in Chile

Abstract

Purpose – The number of wine tourists in Chile is still small even though investment in infrastructure, like cellars and wine routes, has been made in the last five years. A question is important to be answered at this point: is there a market for wine tourism in Chile, did the industry overestimate its potential? The lack of historical data impedes an evaluation of these questions. The purpose of this paper is to forecast the size of the local wine tourists market in Chile and provide with recommendations to its development.Design/methodology/approach – The paper consists of the application of a diffusion model to forecast development paths for Chilean wine tourism market. The model is populated with information obtained through surveys to those demographic segments identified as more closely involved with wine tourism based in Charters and Ali‐Knight.Findings – Chilean wine industry has been developing its infrastructure in wine tourism for a number of years, but the number of wine tourists is still ver...