Tourism region
Encyclopedia
A tourism region is a geographical region
that has been designated by a governmental organization or tourism bureau as having common cultural or environmental characteristics. These regions are often named after historical or current administrative and geographical regions. Others have names created specifically for tourism
purposes. The names often evoke certain positive qualities of the area and suggest a coherent tourism experience to visitors. Countries, states, provinces, and other administrative regions are often carved up into tourism regions. In addition to drawing the attention of potential tourists, these tourism regions often provide tourists who are otherwise unfamiliar with an area with a manageable number of attractive options.
Some of the more famous tourism regions based on historical or current administrative regions include Tuscany
in Italy and Yucatán
in Mexico. Famous examples of regions created by a government or tourism bureau include the United Kingdom
's Lake District
and California's Wine Country
.
of region" in which a region's social and geographical qualities are combined with familiar and traditional representations of the region. The resulting discourse is "produced and reproduced" in the form of advertisements, travelogue
s, and regional literature, as well as in the larger media. Most tourism regions belong to a larger economic and administrative unit which takes on the role of developing the discourse of the tourism region into a marketable product. According to Saarinen, once the discourse of a tourism region has been established, the parent region helps shape further development of the area as a tourism region. This earlier period is characterized by rapid development, construction, investment in greater advertising, and increasing tourism. Eventually, if the region becomes successful as a tourism region, a mature stage in the development of a tourism region is reached where the "meaning and history of the destination are continually produced anew" in cycles of decline, reinvention, growth, and stability.
region of New York
and Canada, the Lake District
of England, the French Riviera
and the Italian Riviera
. Others developed around specific attractions such as a major city, i.e. Paris, or a monument such as the Pyramids of Giza. Tourist regions have existed for thousands of years for relaxation and leisure as well as for religious expression. The ancient Romans visited the hot springs
of Bath in Roman Britain
while Santiago de Compostela
was a site of mass Christian
pilgrimage
supported by a major medieval tourism industry that provided travelers with accommodations along their pilgrimage route.
The modern tourism region emerged out of the Industrial Revolution
as cities grew in size, pollution increased, and an expanding middle class
possessed greater amounts of disposable income. From the Enlightenment
through the nineteenth century, the fashionable Grand Tour
of continental Europe for wealthy young men popularized the idea of leisure travel. The popularity of the Grand Tour, combined with the stresses and benefits of the Industrial Revolution, encouraged wealthy and middle-class European and American families to explore leisure travel, though on a more local scale. These families began frequenting seaside resorts known for their health benefits such as the Roman resort town of Bath, particularly during hotter months that left industrializing cities extremely unpleasant.
The development of faster methods of transportation during the nineteenth century allowed tourists to travel greater distances in smaller periods of time. This period also saw the "seaside" developed as a "spatial area for 'mass tourism,'” a phenomenon that resulted in the development of specific coastal areas as tourist regions. Among elite groups in the nineteenth century, "the mountains" also became increasingly popular in the winter months; the most popular of these regions was Tyrol
in Austria. Tourism regions were often subject to downward mobility as areas frequented by the upper class such as the Catskill Mountains
of New York and Bath in England were abandoned by wealthier visitors when they became too popular with the middle class.
The romantic movement of the 19th century encouraged the appreciation of the natural world, leading to the explosion in popularity of scenic tourism regions such as the English Lake District and the Niagara Falls region. According to Peter Murphy, "increased competition" encouraged private development of hotels, resorts, and entertainment facilities as well as "municipal investment in parades, parks, piers, and baths." These trends marked an important intervention of the state into the evolution of tourism regions.
were areas selected by these organizations as future tourism regions.
At the same time, regions became an increasingly important aspects of nationalism. It is also during this period that the English phrase "tourist region" came into use. Eric Storm has argued that in the later decades of the nineteenth century "the stress was put on the region in order to underline the intimate bond between everyone's own community and the nation.” According to Strom, many people believed that “only by being faithful to its own character could the region contribute to the welfare of the whole." The idea of the region as part of a whole nation gained further ground in the first years of the twentieth century, particularly after World War I, as an argument was advanced that "every region had its own 'soul'…an organic part of the nation." During this period, regional officials and businesses began promoting regions as tourist destination. Through this process, "tourism promoters strove to balance the demands of multiple identities: local, regional, state, national…They instructed their audiences that the regions' political, social, and economic fates were inextricably bound to their landscapes and geography.” Tourists were portrayed “as important historical actors whose engagement…played a vital role in shaping the outcome of that bond."
Although local and regional governments took the larger role in promoting regional tourism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, during the Great Depression
of the 1930s, national governments in Europe and the United States began aggressively promoting travel within their own borders. In doing so, they drew upon nationalist sentiment to imbue tourism regions within the state with greater cultural and historical meaning. Travel became a patriotic gesture as citizens and subjects were encouraged to explore their nation's tourism regions. Nazi Germany's Strength through Joy program subsidized travel for working-class Germans. One of the major projects of the program included "assert[ing] that Germans everywhere should be interested in the various regions" of Germany and that "part of preserving German culture…was to get to know it in all its variants." According to D. Medina Lasansky, in Italy, one piece of tourism literature argued that "'every region of Italy represents a page in the great book of shining national glories from which each one of us could learn to be proud of being Italian.'"
In the United States, "regional diversity" gave strength to a national whole in the United States' tourist guidebooks produced by the New Deal's Federal Writers' Project
. As Andrew Gross argued, the guidebooks "transform[ed] local culture into a tourist attraction, and the tourist attraction into a symbol of national loyalty, in order to reproduce patriotism as a form of brand-name identification." In these WPA
guides, the region became an object of nostalgia, a victim of the national identity that flourished through celebration of the regionalism it was helping to weaken.
. The first of these is a more recently constructed region, while Franche-Comté has been a distinct political and cultural region since the Middle Ages
.
Other governments, such as that of the American state of Nebraska
, have attempted to use the creation of tourism regions to help produce a tourism industry in a state not frequently considered by potential tourists. The state's "Lewis and Clark" region in northeast Nebraska and the "Frontier Trails" region of south-central Nebraska attempt to deemphasize the state's reputation as a place people cross on their way somewhere else by capitalizing the role the state's territory played in the United States' often romanticized project of westward expansion.
For example, the Canadian province of Alberta rationalized its tourism regions during in 1998 to six, down from nearly twenty. Despite this, local initiatives continue to promote much smaller areas than the six massive official regions, which are larger than many European countries. For example, the "Might Peace Tourism Association" is a grouping of local municipalities in the Peace Country which has existed since 1963. Likelywise the Kalyna Country
eco-museum serves a similar role in East-Central Alberta.
Building on the success of wine tourism
in regions such as California's Wine Country, the number of wine regions catering to tourists has grown in recent decades. Although wine regions have existed since the 1850s in France, wine tourism became increasingly popular in the 1970s. Wine regions such as Bordeaux
and Burgundy in France were joined by regions in California, Italy, Spain, and even New York as areas of interest to the potential wine tourist. Currently, several dozen countries have their own wine regions, while many of these countries have dozens of regions within their borders. Many wine regions do not correspond to designated tourism regions. For example, the famous Bordeaux region in France is part of the political and tourism region of Aquitaine
while the Mosel wine region of Germany is located in the Rhineland-Palatinate
state and extends far to the northeast of the Moselle and Saar tourism region.
According to C. Michael Hall, a wine region's success depends not only upon its grapes and the experience of wine tasting
, but also on its "infrastructure, physical environment, scenery, regional cuisine and the social and cultural components of the wine region"—in short, the major characteristics of tourism regions more generally. Wine routes are also a popular feature of wine regions, helping to guide the wine tourist from vineyard to vineyard. Often these wine routes are marked by signs along the region's highways which also serve to inform non-wine tourists of the existence of the wine region.
and supranationalist organizations such as the European Union
encourage the renewal of interest in cross-border regions, tourism regions may increasingly assume a more transnational form. For example, the Euroregions of the European Union allow areas that have been separated by the borders of nation-states to reassert some cultural and political sovereignty
. The Euroregion of Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino was formed to encourage cross-border cooperation between Austria's Tyrol
region and Italy's provinces Trentino and South Tyrol
, all three formerly part of the Austrian County of Tyrol
that once encompassed a large area of the eastern Alps
. One of the goals of this partnership is the establishment of Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino as a coherent tourism region. To further this goal, the Euroregion has produced an extensive travel guide of the region on the Internet. In addition to Tyrol, some of the many Euroregions that have positioned themselves as tourist regions include the Adriatic Euroregion
, which has a Commission for Tourism and Culture, and the Silesian Euroregion, comprising parts of Poland, Slovakia
, and the Czech Republic
, and which also has an official tourism initiative.
Region
Region is most commonly found as a term used in terrestrial and astrophysics sciences also an area, notably among the different sub-disciplines of geography, studied by regional geographers. Regions consist of subregions that contain clusters of like areas that are distinctive by their uniformity...
that has been designated by a governmental organization or tourism bureau as having common cultural or environmental characteristics. These regions are often named after historical or current administrative and geographical regions. Others have names created specifically for tourism
Tourism
Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes".Tourism has become a...
purposes. The names often evoke certain positive qualities of the area and suggest a coherent tourism experience to visitors. Countries, states, provinces, and other administrative regions are often carved up into tourism regions. In addition to drawing the attention of potential tourists, these tourism regions often provide tourists who are otherwise unfamiliar with an area with a manageable number of attractive options.
Some of the more famous tourism regions based on historical or current administrative regions include Tuscany
Tuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
in Italy and Yucatán
Yucatán
Yucatán officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Yucatán is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 106 municipalities and its capital city is Mérida....
in Mexico. Famous examples of regions created by a government or tourism bureau include the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
's Lake District
Lake District
The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...
and California's Wine Country
Wine Country
The Wine Country is a region of Northern California in the United States known worldwide as a premium wine-growing region. Viticulture and wine-making have been practiced in the region since the mid-19th century...
.
Development of Tourism Regions
Tourism scholar Jaarko Saarinen has identified a "discourseDiscourse
Discourse generally refers to "written or spoken communication". The following are three more specific definitions:...
of region" in which a region's social and geographical qualities are combined with familiar and traditional representations of the region. The resulting discourse is "produced and reproduced" in the form of advertisements, travelogue
Travelogue
Travelogue is the second full-length studio album released by the British synthpop band The Human League, released in May 1980 before the band achieved any degree of commercial success....
s, and regional literature, as well as in the larger media. Most tourism regions belong to a larger economic and administrative unit which takes on the role of developing the discourse of the tourism region into a marketable product. According to Saarinen, once the discourse of a tourism region has been established, the parent region helps shape further development of the area as a tourism region. This earlier period is characterized by rapid development, construction, investment in greater advertising, and increasing tourism. Eventually, if the region becomes successful as a tourism region, a mature stage in the development of a tourism region is reached where the "meaning and history of the destination are continually produced anew" in cycles of decline, reinvention, growth, and stability.
18th and 19th Centuries
Historically, tourism regions often developed in areas widely considered to a of historical, cultural, or natural importance such as the Niagara FallsNiagara Falls
The Niagara Falls, located on the Niagara River draining Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, is the collective name for the Horseshoe Falls and the adjacent American Falls along with the comparatively small Bridal Veil Falls, which combined form the highest flow rate of any waterfalls in the world and has...
region of New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and Canada, the Lake District
Lake District
The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...
of England, the French Riviera
French Riviera
The Côte d'Azur, pronounced , often known in English as the French Riviera , is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France, also including the sovereign state of Monaco...
and the Italian Riviera
Italian Riviera
The Italian Riviera, or Ligurian Riviera is the narrow coastal strip which lies between the Ligurian Sea and the mountain chain formed by the Maritime Alps and the Apennines...
. Others developed around specific attractions such as a major city, i.e. Paris, or a monument such as the Pyramids of Giza. Tourist regions have existed for thousands of years for relaxation and leisure as well as for religious expression. The ancient Romans visited the hot springs
Hot Springs
Hot Springs may refer to:* Hot Springs, Arkansas** Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas*Hot Springs, California**Hot Springs, Lassen County, California**Hot Springs, Modoc County, California**Hot Springs, Placer County, California...
of Bath in Roman Britain
Roman Britain
Roman Britain was the part of the island of Great Britain controlled by the Roman Empire from AD 43 until ca. AD 410.The Romans referred to the imperial province as Britannia, which eventually comprised all of the island of Great Britain south of the fluid frontier with Caledonia...
while Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela is the capital of the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain.The city's Cathedral is the destination today, as it has been throughout history, of the important 9th century medieval pilgrimage route, the Way of St. James...
was a site of mass Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
pilgrimage
Pilgrimage
A pilgrimage is a journey or search of great moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith...
supported by a major medieval tourism industry that provided travelers with accommodations along their pilgrimage route.
The modern tourism region emerged out of the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
as cities grew in size, pollution increased, and an expanding middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
possessed greater amounts of disposable income. From the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
through the nineteenth century, the fashionable Grand Tour
Grand Tour
The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...
of continental Europe for wealthy young men popularized the idea of leisure travel. The popularity of the Grand Tour, combined with the stresses and benefits of the Industrial Revolution, encouraged wealthy and middle-class European and American families to explore leisure travel, though on a more local scale. These families began frequenting seaside resorts known for their health benefits such as the Roman resort town of Bath, particularly during hotter months that left industrializing cities extremely unpleasant.
The development of faster methods of transportation during the nineteenth century allowed tourists to travel greater distances in smaller periods of time. This period also saw the "seaside" developed as a "spatial area for 'mass tourism,'” a phenomenon that resulted in the development of specific coastal areas as tourist regions. Among elite groups in the nineteenth century, "the mountains" also became increasingly popular in the winter months; the most popular of these regions was Tyrol
County of Tyrol
The County of Tyrol, Princely County from 1504, was a State of the Holy Roman Empire, from 1814 a province of the Austrian Empire and from 1867 a Cisleithanian crown land of Austria-Hungary...
in Austria. Tourism regions were often subject to downward mobility as areas frequented by the upper class such as the Catskill Mountains
Catskill Mountains
The Catskill Mountains, an area in New York State northwest of New York City and southwest of Albany, are a mature dissected plateau, an uplifted region that was subsequently eroded into sharp relief. They are an eastward continuation, and the highest representation, of the Allegheny Plateau...
of New York and Bath in England were abandoned by wealthier visitors when they became too popular with the middle class.
The romantic movement of the 19th century encouraged the appreciation of the natural world, leading to the explosion in popularity of scenic tourism regions such as the English Lake District and the Niagara Falls region. According to Peter Murphy, "increased competition" encouraged private development of hotels, resorts, and entertainment facilities as well as "municipal investment in parades, parks, piers, and baths." These trends marked an important intervention of the state into the evolution of tourism regions.
20th Century
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, governments increasingly took a role in encouraging the development of tourism regions. Federal and state governments in the United States, with the encouragement of conservation groups, and European countries and their colonies began setting aside areas as parks, monuments, and trails for preservation and future enjoyment. Some of these, such as Niagara Falls, were existing tourism regions while parks such as Yellowstone National ParkYellowstone National Park
Yellowstone National Park, established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872, is a national park located primarily in the U.S. state of Wyoming, although it also extends into Montana and Idaho...
were areas selected by these organizations as future tourism regions.
At the same time, regions became an increasingly important aspects of nationalism. It is also during this period that the English phrase "tourist region" came into use. Eric Storm has argued that in the later decades of the nineteenth century "the stress was put on the region in order to underline the intimate bond between everyone's own community and the nation.” According to Strom, many people believed that “only by being faithful to its own character could the region contribute to the welfare of the whole." The idea of the region as part of a whole nation gained further ground in the first years of the twentieth century, particularly after World War I, as an argument was advanced that "every region had its own 'soul'…an organic part of the nation." During this period, regional officials and businesses began promoting regions as tourist destination. Through this process, "tourism promoters strove to balance the demands of multiple identities: local, regional, state, national…They instructed their audiences that the regions' political, social, and economic fates were inextricably bound to their landscapes and geography.” Tourists were portrayed “as important historical actors whose engagement…played a vital role in shaping the outcome of that bond."
Although local and regional governments took the larger role in promoting regional tourism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
of the 1930s, national governments in Europe and the United States began aggressively promoting travel within their own borders. In doing so, they drew upon nationalist sentiment to imbue tourism regions within the state with greater cultural and historical meaning. Travel became a patriotic gesture as citizens and subjects were encouraged to explore their nation's tourism regions. Nazi Germany's Strength through Joy program subsidized travel for working-class Germans. One of the major projects of the program included "assert[ing] that Germans everywhere should be interested in the various regions" of Germany and that "part of preserving German culture…was to get to know it in all its variants." According to D. Medina Lasansky, in Italy, one piece of tourism literature argued that "'every region of Italy represents a page in the great book of shining national glories from which each one of us could learn to be proud of being Italian.'"
In the United States, "regional diversity" gave strength to a national whole in the United States' tourist guidebooks produced by the New Deal's Federal Writers' Project
Federal Writers' Project
The Federal Writers' Project was a United States federal government project to fund written work and support writers during the Great Depression. It was part of the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program...
. As Andrew Gross argued, the guidebooks "transform[ed] local culture into a tourist attraction, and the tourist attraction into a symbol of national loyalty, in order to reproduce patriotism as a form of brand-name identification." In these WPA
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...
guides, the region became an object of nostalgia, a victim of the national identity that flourished through celebration of the regionalism it was helping to weaken.
Recent developments
Continuing earlier trends, governments have attempted to maximize tourism potential by reverse engineering tourism regions. This process consists of dividing their territories into discrete tourism regions in such a way that every inch of that country, state, or region is given an attractive name, provided with advertising, and basic tourism infrastructure such as signage. Some traditionally heavily touristed countries such as France have implemented this strategy to encourage tourists who would normally only spend time in more famous areas such as Paris and the French Riviera to venture out into designated tourism regions such as the Western Loire Valley and Franche-ComtéFranche-Comté
Franche-Comté the former "Free County" of Burgundy, as distinct from the neighbouring Duchy, is an administrative region and a traditional province of eastern France...
. The first of these is a more recently constructed region, while Franche-Comté has been a distinct political and cultural region since the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
.
Other governments, such as that of the American state of Nebraska
Nebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
, have attempted to use the creation of tourism regions to help produce a tourism industry in a state not frequently considered by potential tourists. The state's "Lewis and Clark" region in northeast Nebraska and the "Frontier Trails" region of south-central Nebraska attempt to deemphasize the state's reputation as a place people cross on their way somewhere else by capitalizing the role the state's territory played in the United States' often romanticized project of westward expansion.
Non-government regions and eco-museums
A counter-trend to the establishment of government-designated tourism regions is that of local voluntary associations which cooperate to market a specific area. One popular type is a eco-museum which promotes natural and cutltural tourism in rural areas. Ecomuseums originated in France in the 1970s and have spread across Europe and to North America as well.For example, the Canadian province of Alberta rationalized its tourism regions during in 1998 to six, down from nearly twenty. Despite this, local initiatives continue to promote much smaller areas than the six massive official regions, which are larger than many European countries. For example, the "Might Peace Tourism Association" is a grouping of local municipalities in the Peace Country which has existed since 1963. Likelywise the Kalyna Country
Kalyna Country
The Kalyna Country ecomuseum is a heritage and eco-tourism district in East Central Alberta, Canada, named after the highbush cranberry plant, pronounced in the Ukrainian language....
eco-museum serves a similar role in East-Central Alberta.
Wine Regions
Wine tourism
Wine tourism refers to tourism whose purpose is or includes the tasting, consumption or purchase of wine, often at or near the source. Wine tourism can consist of visits to wineries, vineyards and restaurants known to offer unique vintages, as well as organized wine tours, wine festivals or other...
in regions such as California's Wine Country, the number of wine regions catering to tourists has grown in recent decades. Although wine regions have existed since the 1850s in France, wine tourism became increasingly popular in the 1970s. Wine regions such as Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
and Burgundy in France were joined by regions in California, Italy, Spain, and even New York as areas of interest to the potential wine tourist. Currently, several dozen countries have their own wine regions, while many of these countries have dozens of regions within their borders. Many wine regions do not correspond to designated tourism regions. For example, the famous Bordeaux region in France is part of the political and tourism region of Aquitaine
Aquitaine
Aquitaine , archaic Guyenne/Guienne , is one of the 27 regions of France, in the south-western part of metropolitan France, along the Atlantic Ocean and the Pyrenees mountain range on the border with Spain. It comprises the 5 departments of Dordogne, :Lot et Garonne, :Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Landes...
while the Mosel wine region of Germany is located in the Rhineland-Palatinate
Rhineland-Palatinate
Rhineland-Palatinate is one of the 16 states of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has an area of and about four million inhabitants. The capital is Mainz. English speakers also commonly refer to the state by its German name, Rheinland-Pfalz ....
state and extends far to the northeast of the Moselle and Saar tourism region.
According to C. Michael Hall, a wine region's success depends not only upon its grapes and the experience of wine tasting
Wine tasting
Wine tasting is the sensory examination and evaluation of wine. While the practice of wine tasting is as ancient as its production, a more formalized methodology has slowly become established from the 14th century onwards...
, but also on its "infrastructure, physical environment, scenery, regional cuisine and the social and cultural components of the wine region"—in short, the major characteristics of tourism regions more generally. Wine routes are also a popular feature of wine regions, helping to guide the wine tourist from vineyard to vineyard. Often these wine routes are marked by signs along the region's highways which also serve to inform non-wine tourists of the existence of the wine region.
Future Trends
As globalizationGlobalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
and supranationalist organizations such as the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
encourage the renewal of interest in cross-border regions, tourism regions may increasingly assume a more transnational form. For example, the Euroregions of the European Union allow areas that have been separated by the borders of nation-states to reassert some cultural and political sovereignty
Sovereignty
Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...
. The Euroregion of Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino was formed to encourage cross-border cooperation between Austria's Tyrol
Tyrol (state)
Tyrol is a state or Bundesland, located in the west of Austria. It comprises the Austrian part of the historical region of Tyrol.The state is split into two parts–called North Tyrol and East Tyrol–by a -wide strip of land where the state of Salzburg borders directly on the Italian province of...
region and Italy's provinces Trentino and South Tyrol
South Tyrol
South Tyrol , also known by its Italian name Alto Adige, is an autonomous province in northern Italy. It is one of the two autonomous provinces that make up the autonomous region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. The province has an area of and a total population of more than 500,000 inhabitants...
, all three formerly part of the Austrian County of Tyrol
County of Tyrol
The County of Tyrol, Princely County from 1504, was a State of the Holy Roman Empire, from 1814 a province of the Austrian Empire and from 1867 a Cisleithanian crown land of Austria-Hungary...
that once encompassed a large area of the eastern Alps
Alps
The Alps is one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west....
. One of the goals of this partnership is the establishment of Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino as a coherent tourism region. To further this goal, the Euroregion has produced an extensive travel guide of the region on the Internet. In addition to Tyrol, some of the many Euroregions that have positioned themselves as tourist regions include the Adriatic Euroregion
Adriatic Euroregion
The Adriatic Euroregion is a Euroregion comprising countries and their subdivisions bordering the Adriatic Sea. It was established in 2006. The president of the organization is Ivan Jakovčić.-Italy:*Region of Puglia*Region of Molise*Region of Abruzzo...
, which has a Commission for Tourism and Culture, and the Silesian Euroregion, comprising parts of Poland, Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
, and the Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
, and which also has an official tourism initiative.