Economic Aspects of Wine Tourism Sustainability at a UNESCO World Heritage Region of Upper Middle Rhine, Germany

The paper deals with sustainability aspects of wine tourism demand in the region of high natural and cultural distinctiveness, which has been recognised by UNESCO as world heritage. The paper primarily deals with the importance of sustainability on wine buying decision, as well as seasonality of wine tourism demand and awareness of the Middle Rhein as a wine region as three important economic aspects of wine destination sustainability. It also deals with the mode of arrival to the destination as an economic/environmental sustainability indicator. The results section finally presents in detail the visitor’s travel and wine travel behavior as well as wine knowledge. The data was collected on the sample of N=400 visitors at the destination of St. Goar-Loreley and presented as descriptive statistics. The results demonstrate the high importance of the sustainability aspect on the decision for buying wine, high yearly volatility of the wine tourism demand, high awareness of the Middle Rhine as a wine region although wine, culture, and education represents the smallest primary motivations for travel. The article postulates that sustainability needs to be included in the wider destination context, beyond the wine tourism focus only, in order to enhance the authenticity of sustainable wine tourism offer and protect the destination cultural and natural resources. In this sense, sustainable innovations at the intersection between heritage, wine and tourism should be encouraged in order to advance the management of resources of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley with the offer that matches the preferences of contemporary travellers and their expectations from a well-known tourist destination.