Benchmarking wine tourism destinations – the case of Bulgaria

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is twofold – on the one hand, to introduce a framework for benchmarking of wine regions and on the other, to analyze the activities of wineries in Bulgaria with a clear focus on tourism.

Design/methodology/approach

The research design includes secondary data and content analysis, which are complemented by a survey among wine cellar owners and managers in the country, including respondents from all five wine regions.

Findings

The paper has identified several problems that impede wine tourism development in Bulgaria, including: small number of wineries, small share of Protected Designation of Origin wines, ineffective business hours structure and small share of wineries offering additional services beyond tasting or cellar-door sales. On the other hand, wineries in Bulgaria conform to international trends in terms of providing accommodation, restaurant and SPA treatments. The survey revealed that tourism-hosting wineries consider wine tourism an important part of their activity but do not succeed in attracting a sufficient number of visitors, and the share of tourism-related revenues to their total incomes is small.

Research limitations/implications

The survey included all the wineries in the country; in one of the regions (the Black Sea region), however, the response rate was very low, which means that while results and conclusions are representative for the country as a whole, they might not be applicable to this specific region.

Originality/value

The research results refer to an emerging wine destination, which has not been the object of a comprehensive study yet. In addition, the proposed update of an existing benchmarking model reflects recent changes and trends in the wine tourism industry.

Citation

Terziyska, I. (2017), "Benchmarking wine tourism destinations – the case of Bulgaria", International Journal of Wine Business Research, Vol. 29 No. 4, pp. 384-400. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJWBR-01-2017-0004