Analysis of Texas Winery Visitor Spending and GOTEXAN Efforts to Promote Winery Tourism

Swinburne University (Langworthy, Howard, Fiona & Mawson, 2006), agri-tourism is a growing phenomenon in Australia, often most strongly associated with wine regions. Recommendations to improve include creation of tourism regions & cooperatives, cooperation between sectors (CVBs, restaurants), infrastructure development and model development to measurable factors. South African wineries Bruwer, 2003 identified factors that were helpful in developing a wine tourism market of South African wineries. Regarding South Africa wine tourism, areas of winery business that promote tourism include both service provision and destination marketing, development of wine routes forms an integral part of the wine tourism industry, estates sell more wine through the cellar-door and tourism industry needs well-developed infrastructure. To complete this analysis for Texas, an online survey was sent to over 9,000 wine consumers. Preliminary results of this study found that Texas winery travelers spend over $400 per winery visit. Winery tourism outspend typical tourist in Texas with 24% of their spending related to accommodations spending. Wineries involved in promoting tourism visitations have significantly higher sales and winery visitation than those not focusing on tourism as part of the marketing promotions (p<.05). A secondary aspect of this study is to survey Texas wineries and measure their involvement and satisfaction with TDA wine support efforts. The results illustrate that wineries involved in TDA wine promotional programs report higher increases in sales, winery visitations and attribute increases in sales to TDA marketing efforts over those less involved wineries.