In response to the need for a better empirical understanding of the multiple factors that drive the demand of wine tourism, this paper serves a twofold objective: first, to test the distinctiveness of motivations for visiting a wine region along with a winery; and secondly, to explore whether geographical distance between tourists׳ place of origin and the wine region can add to the ability of other wine consumer/tourist variables (product involvement; product knowledge; wine tourist identity; past experience) to predict specific aspects of wine tourist behavior. In doing so, quantitative survey data were collected from 381 visitors of 12 wineries located in Northern Greece. Results from Principal Component and Multiple Hierarchical Regression Analyses indicate that travel distance predicts wine purchasing at the cellar door as well as the motivational factors associated with ׳Socialization׳ and ׳Destination attractiveness׳. Further, the study proposes a conceptual framework for wine tourism motivation.

Since the late 1990s, wine tourism has been enjoying increasing popularity in both traditional and emerging viticultural regions, with various private and public stakeholders combining their efforts to maximize the mutual benefits that can arise from potential inter-sectoral synergies ( Wade and Pun, 2009 ). Towards this goal, understanding why people travel to a wine region along with the forces that influence their behavior has been acknowledged as a critical step in developing successful marketing strategies ( Ku, 2011 and Lam and Hsu, 2006 ). Recognizing the aforementioned linkage, a fairly steady stream of academic research has sought to answer the question ‘who is the wine tourist and what does he/she want?’ posed initially by Charters and Ali-Knight (2002) and more recently by Getz and Brown (2006) .

Despite the significant progress made over the past decade in terms of exploring the profile of actual and potential visitors, the diversity of factors that affect consumer behavior leaves the field still unexplored ( Gómez et al., 2015 ; Molina et al., 2015 ). In addition, research on demand-side aspects of wine tourism has been hampered by a lack of empirical data, particularly in the so called Old World, i.e. Europe ( Charters and Menival, 2011 and Mitchell and Hall, 2006 ). This paper responds to this gap, by providing evidence on the role of travel distance and other consumer variables in predicting wine tourism motivations.

The wine tourism experience extends beyond the mere drinking of wine ( Roberts and Sparks, 2006 ). Mitchell et al. (2000: 86) made a first distinction between ‘primary’ (wine tasting and purchasing) and ‘secondary’ or ‘peripheral’ wine tourism motivations (i.e. events and festivals; local culture and gastronomy). Within the framework of Push–Pull Theory ( Crompton, 1979 and Dann, 1981 ), wine tourism incorporates a bundle of benefits ( Getz et al., 2008 ), which are linked, not only with intrinsic needs, namely push factors, but also with particular attributes (pull factors) that draw the visitor to the wine region or the winery ( Mitchell et al., 2000: 126 ) and shape the attractiveness of each destination.

Alant and Bruwer (2004) developed a theoretical framework which incorporates three sub-dimensions of motivation, namely: 1. the Visitor; 2. the Wine Region; and 3. the Visit Dynamic, i.e. first time or repeat visitation phenomena. Getz and Brown (2006) examined the relative importance of various regional features in influencing potential wine tourists׳ destination choice behavior. Exploratory factor analysis revealed three critical components of wine tourism. Several studies since then have adopted the same methodology to test the multidimensionality of wine tourism motivation from an experiential point of view. Table 1 presents a summary of findings.

Underlying dimensions of wine tourism motivations/experience in literature.