engleski

Wine and sun and sea tourism: Fruitful relationship or impossible dream?

Croatian Adriatic is well developed tourism destination with over a century of tourism tradition. With the rapid increase in tourism demand since 1950s many residents have abandoned traditional agricultural activities and turned to tending to the visitor needs. This trend was reversed during the early 1990s when tourism came to a halt, owning to the armed conflict. Residents have revived their age honored tradition of grape growing – cleaned up old and degraded and planted new vineyards – out of which a new wave of entrepreneurs emerged, willing to invest in winery as a primary entrepreneurial activity and striving to gain high quality and market reputation for their wines. This task was made easier by the fact that these regions are nationally recognized for the quality red wine and local variety of grapes. With the tourism demand restoring quickly after the cessation of war activities and renewed wine production, it would be reasonable to expect that wine tourism would develop quickly. The paper investigates the issues and challenges faced by wineries from the entrepreneurial perspective proposed by Getz and Brown (2006a) based on the survey of winery operators in the Middle Dalmatia. The results fill the gap in the literature not only regarding better understanding of wine tourism and entrepreneurship in wine tourism development but in terms of understanding the compatibility of wine tourism with the dominant Mediterranean tourism product – that of the sun and sea.

wine tourism; wineries; Middle Dalmatia; Croatia

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