Public-private cooperation in wine tourism - A territorial model for small municipalities in Italy

From a quantitative point of view, Italy as country is the largest producer of wine in the world. Similarly, wine tourism, as additional business opportunity related to wine production in the strict sense, is a phenomenon of great success in Italy, but it has not yet reached the high levels of other countries (especially the New World of Wine). One of the main limits of this delay, even in the presence of significant performances, is the lack of synergistic collaboration, at widespread level, among the operators of the sector. This research intends to investigate in particular the reliability of a possible collaboration model for wine tourism with a ‘public’ basis that is, from the point of view of the municipality engaged in the promotion of the wine tourism industry insisting on its own territory. The survey, which has proposed a territorial model derived from previous studies on the subject conducted by the authors, has showed the substantial reliability of the model, bringing out, at the same time, a clear difference of perception between non-small municipalities and small municipalities. A recent legislation in Italy, just focused on small municipalities, might help overcome these gaps, freeing in the territory new energies, from both planning and financing point of views, for an even more important development of wine tourism in Italy.