Mid Sweden University

My presentation focuses on knowledge development and capacity building in wineproducingregions that are diversifying into tourism. I present findings from a completedempirical study conducted in a boutique wine region in the Italian Alps, where grapeproduction is transitioning toward wine tourism.As part of my fieldwork, I visited cellar doors of family-run wineries and observed howfarmers and their families become skilled tourism brokers. I continued further with winethemedevents to see how “new” tourism competence is circulating across community.

My presentation covers occupational and geographic mobility patterns of young bar, restaurant, and kitchen staff who relocate seasonally between the island of Gotland, a seaside summer destination, and Åre, a winter resort in mountains. Previous research has examined mobility patterns from large municipalities to Sweden's mountain ranges (Lundmark, 2006; Thulemark, 2017; Cassel et al., 2018;Zampoukos, 2018. The reciprocal movement between Visby and Åre, however, remained outside scholarly attention, even though these bundled locations are top choices for career- and lifestyle-driven tourism workers in Sweden. I refer to reciprocal mobility patterns as cyclical, interregional employment movement between tourism-dominated destinations with opposite seasonal peaks. In my theoretical framework, I incorporate both structural forces shaping mobility (e.g., seasonality of tourist destinations; the Swedish career and life-style driven labor culture) and agency-based perspectives from bar and restaurant staff who have travelled regularly between summer and winter destinations. The workers’ accounts reveal how they deliberately piece together their seasonal contracts into one coherent careerpath to allow themselves more flexibility and frequently more pay compared to those with permanent employment in the sector. In part, young tourism workers use their skills and competences as raw resources to negotiate better social packages and raise with seasonal employers. I lastly discuss how socially sustainable are such cyclical movement for receiving communities, given the temporary influx of skills needed for mature destinations to maintain their tourism profiles.