Barreal, JesúsGago de Santos, PilarVena Oya, Julio2026-04-082026-04-082025Barreal Pernas, J., Gago De Santos, R., Vena Oya, J. (2025). Profiling Tourist Movements in Rural Areas with Wine Protected Designations of Origin: Analyzing Tourist Spending & Accommodation Patterns. New Medit 5 (2025). https://doi.org/10.30682/nm2505e2611-1128https://hdl.handle.net/10347/46609This paper aims to analyse Spain’s inbound tourism in low-populated areas (under 5000 inhabitants) within its wine-protected regions. Based on data retrieved from 2015 to 2023 from the national survey on tourism expenditure (EGATUR) and employing a Latent Class Model research method, we will segment Spain’s inbound tourism (in terms of their expenditure, motivations and accommodation patterns) into four classes from the most profligate to the thriftiest while consuming tourism services in Spain’s regions less populated, where the international demand is lower than Spain’s average international demand for tourism services. The paper includes a statistical analysis (Wilcoxon and Lenven’s tests) of the economic patterns of each class, concluding that it is essential to encourage Europeans to come to these destinations to improve the rural economy and their long-term sustainability.engCopyright: © The Author(s) 2025 This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Attribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Depopulated areasTourism demand diversificationSpain’s wine-protected areasInbound tourismSustainable tourismLatent class modeljournal article10.30682/NM2505E1594-5685open access