We came across Hanne Kröger on the Linked in Group Wine and Culinary Tourism Worldwide where she posted a request for wine tourists to complete a survey in an attempt to find out what they perceive to be important when visiting a wine region with emphasis on whether they think that sustainability of the wine regions should be promoted.
We recently chatted to Hanne and ask her to introduce herself and tell us more about her research.
Wine and travel have always been two of my main interest areas. This fact led to choosing an undergraduate program in tourism management in order to make my passion my job. However, I quickly realized that I would like to be deeper involved in research and continued my professional career with a university degree in business. Relatively fast I noticed that I miss the tourism aspect in my education. That was the time I had to choose a topic for my master thesis. I kept hearing I have to choose a topic that I am passionate about in order to stay motivated since a master thesis is a long process. After brainstorming with my professor, we came up with a combination between the tourism field and my passion for wine. In addition I wanted to research a topic that I thought could change the world a little bit in the right direction. For this reason I added sustainability as my major research aspect in the thesis.
My survey aims to find out which wine region features are perceived to be important by wine tourists. In addition, I would like to research whether and how wine tourists would like to be informed about sustainability of wine regions. Promotional strategies for wine regions should be possible to be developed with the results of this survey.
Overall I am very lucky to be able to research something that is so close to my leisure interest. Moreover, I might even get the chance to continue the research as a doctoral study which would be a dream come true. I would like to thank all participants who take the time to be part of this study and help to understand the wine tourist a little bit better.
Hanne Kröger – University of Amsterdam, 2012
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