On October 8 2024, the Bucelas wine region launched the book Wine Tourism Law following the 1st World Congress about Wine Tourism and the Law https://tourismlaw.pt/program-of-1st-world-congress-about-wine-tourism-and-the-law/. Nelson Batista (Environmental and Economy Councilor in the Municipality of Loures), Carla Salsinha (president of the Regional Tourism Entity of the Lisbon Region), Pedro Machado (Secretary of State for Tourism), Carlos Torres (ESHTE | IJTTHL) and Vasco Touguinha (Tourism Councilor in the Municipality of Loures).

 

 

https://files.tourismlaw.pt/Wine-Tourism-Law/

 

 

 

MESSAGE OF H.E. THE PRESIDENT OF THE PORTUGUESE REPUBLIC ADDRESSED TO THE 1ST CONGRESS ON WINE TOURISM AND THE LAW

Bucelas, October 23, 2023

Mr. Secretary of State for Tourism, Trade and Services, Nuno Fazenda

Mr. Loures City Council Councilor, Vasco Touguinha

Mr. President of the Wine Portuguese Municipalities Association, Luís Encarnação

Mr. President of the Vine and Wine Institute, Bernardo Gouvêa

Chairman of the World Wine Tourism Association, Luís Encarnação 

Dear Congressmen,

Wine and tourism have a synergy that matters to value at all levels and also covers many other areas of activity that develop mostly in the interior territories. Enotourism can thus help achieve more cohesive socio-economic development by adding value in a sustainable way for businesses, territories, and countries.

But enotourism also has challenges to overcome, many of them characteristic of rural areas, such as digital and climate transition, depopulation or lack of infrastructure and support services, and other challenges that stem from the multidisciplinarity of enotourism itself, its amplitude, not yet wholly consensualized, and perhaps so yet without a legal, comprehensive framework.

Dear Congressmen, Portugal is a world-referenced destination for Wine Tourism. We are admittedly one of the best tourist destinations in the world, an international reference in wine production. We have a rich, diverse, and natural wine landscape with heritage.

But we still have a path to make in appreciating our vine territories as tourist destinations, qualifying supply, empowering human resources, or networking, involving all stakeholders, wine producers to wineries, farms to restaurants and bars, in the field, but also because not in the city, with the impressionable support of local power, supported by a strategy that has to be necessarily national.

I salute by this initiative of the Estoril Higuer Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies (ESHTE) and INATEL Foundation in the person of Dr Carlos Torres, for organizing this 1st World Congress on Wine Tourism and the Law to discuss enotourism and its regulation by learning from other European and world examples and from the path that has already been made by all. And it’s also the opportunity to get to know the good Portuguese example of how this year, 19 municipalities have joined to be, all of them, Douro – European Capital of the 2023 Wine and promote wine, and also enotourism, in its territories.

I vote that this congress is a rich, broad reflection that will allow to strengthen the development and wealth creation for the enotourism sector in a European and global framework.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa

Lisbon, Belém National Palace, 4th October 2023

 

 

 

 

https://files.tourismlaw.pt/Wine-Tourism-Law/