Posted on 02/26/2020
Wine tourism is growing! An estimated number of almost 14 million wine tourists visited Italy in 2019, 7% of whom decided to visit Sicily*. Wine tourism is a form of tourism practiced by well-educated, culturally evolved tourists with high spending power who, when travelling, want to have exciting and enriching experiences. This is why the Florio Winery of Marsala and the Duca di Salaparuta Winery of Casteldaccia (PA) have been working on implementing and developing their tourism offer, based on a new way of looking at spaces in the Wine Cellars, which are no longer just production sites: in fact, they are now open to the public, becoming cultural and artistic centres.
FLORIO WINERY | In 2019, out of the 7% of wine tourists who came to Sicily, almost half of them visited our Winery di Marsala. In fact, the Wine Cellars welcomed nearly 50.000 visitors, recording a steady increase in the number of foreign visitors (+13%), mainly French-speaking and especially in the months of October and September. Wine tourists are now increasingly informed (the number of “do-it-yourself” tourists is decreasing in favour of tours organised by specialist Tour Operators), as well as demanding. In 2019, the turnover generated by guided tours and events in the wine cellar, plus the turnover from the internal Wine Shop, exceeded €1 million, which is further confirmation of the trend that sees wine tourists as willing to spend more and increasingly drawn towards superior quality offers and services.
After the wine tastings, paired with typical local food, and a guided tour of the charming historic Florio barrel Cellars, visitors are directed into the Wine Shop where they can take a moment to relax in a cosy, modern environment and take their time to choose the wine they prefer. Here, in 2019, almost 51.000 bottles were sold. The best-selling wine was one of Florio’s most revered Marsala wines, Targa, of which more than 10.000 bottles were purchased.
DUCA DI SALAPARUTA WINERY | The Duca di Salaparuta Winery in Casteldaccia (PA), which reopened to the public in 2017, are increasingly becoming a benchmark in the tourism sector in the Palermo area. In fact, in 2019, the number of visitors exceeded 11.000, a 20% increase compared to the previous year. Most of the wine tourists who visit the Duca di Salaparuta Winery are Italian (82%) and, in this case too, have high spending power. In fact, there has been a huge increase in turnover from visits and events, totalling approximately €250.000 (+57% compared to 2018), to which the turnover of the Wine Shop must be added, which exceeds €100.000 (+16% compared to 2018).
These two Wine Cellars – which are very different from one another, but stem from the same wish to express the Company’s unique style – reflect the desire to offer visitors an experience steeped in history and packed with accounts of wine and culinary excellence that will amaze and delight them.
HIGHLIGHTS:
◦ The Duca di Salaparuta Hospitality Team features 6 extremely dedicated people
◦ Duca di Salaparuta offers wine lovers throughout Italy the opportunity to prolong the experience of visiting its Cellars by buying Corvo, Duca di Salaparuta and Florio wines through its first online store: www.duca.store.
*SOURCE: Fifteenth Report on Italian Wine Tourism, drawn up by the Osservatorio delle Città del Vino and the University of Salerno