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Purpose: This paper uses performance theory to explore how wine-tourism experiences are orchestrated by wine tour guides to encourage engagement of consumers. It describes how such orchestration is built on material elements such as landscapes, architecture, vineyards, production facilities, and wine tastings.

Design/methodology/approach: A multi-layer ethnographic research on wine-tourism was employed. The interviews, observations, and field notes were analyzed through the lens of performance theory. A constant comparative method was used to identify emergent patterns, and a hermeneutic method was used to interpret the data.

Findings: The paper builds on performance theory and delineates the ways in which guides co-create intense experiences with participants. It portrays how tour guides often adjust their theatrical scripts to consumers’ unique needs through creative variations: surprise treats, activities, and personal stories. When guides take pleasure in tours, participants do as well, resulting in memorable co-created experiences. The tours feature processes such as pitching and relation-building techniques that call upon identity, morality, and materiality scripts, which ultimately build a sense of social obligation among participants toward tour guides and winery staff.

Originality/value: From a theoretical perspective, the paper adds value to the discussion of performance in tourism by suggesting that the service blueprint, architecture, and employee training are only part of the story. This paper shows how consumer engagement and interactions between participants, guides, architecture, and landscapes are essential elements of memorable experiences.

Research limitations: Like other studies, there are limitations to our study as well. Our study only included one-day wine tours. A broader investigation of strategic alliances between tour companies and wineries, and how wine tourists experience and sustain a sense of social obligations to the wineries they visit, will provide further insights into how wine-tourism functions as a co-creative emergent form of consumption involving individuals, products, and processes.

The purpose of this chapter is to evaluate the management of the rural tourist experience in Cyprus. In doing so, it specifically attempts to examine rural tourists’ experiences in relation to travel motives and activities performed in rural areas in Cyprus, explore overall satisfaction with the rural tourist experience with regard to several physical, social, and symbolic attributes derived from the literature review and elicit recommendations that can improve the tourist experience in rural areas.

An exploratory research approach was utilized, whereby 70 open-ended casual interviews were conducted with domestic and international tourists visiting rural areas in Cyprus.

Main findings derived from this study include the realization that the rural tourism experience is fragmented and largely shaped by travel motives, regional characteristics, support services, and service provision.

A refined segmentation strategy is proposed as well as the development of synergistic, innovative linkages among rural tourism stakeholders and across sectors in the industry, with thematic clusters representing a favorable proposed strategy.

Although the study is centered on a single case, theoretical and practical implications may be derived with regard to the demand aspects of rural tourist experiences. In turn, such insights may be transferrable to other rural destination contexts.

Tourism is a key source of income to South Africa. Food and beverages is a key part of tourism and the literature reveals that tourists spend up to a quarter of their budget on cuisine. South Africa has, however, been rated as the least-prepared culinary travel destination and the travel destination with the greatest potential for growth. Therefore, a segmentation taxonomy based on culinary preferences of international tourists to South Africa is put forth which can be used to prepare South Africa as a culinary travel destination. The 627 international tourists surveyed were divided into five segments with the use of factor analyses, t-tests, Spearman rank correlations and analysis of variance. The segments were named conservationists, experience seekers, devotees, explorers and socialisers (CEDES taxonomy). Multiple results and implications are discussed in the paper.

Wine has been considered an artisan product for a long period of time. This is due to the cultural heritage and history that goes into the production process. The aim of this chapter is to discuss the role of wine artisans in the global economy in terms of tourism and the esthetic cognition apparent in rural landscapes. To do this, the role of customers as co-creators of the wine experience is discussed, which helps to understand the evolving nature of the wine industry. The way artisan forms of wine are being produced because of eco-innovation reasons are stated. This enables more information to be obtained about the nature of wine artisan entrepreneurship. Theoretical and practical implications are stated together with suggestions for future research.

The relevance of entrepreneurship in the economic systems of the regions is well documented. Recently, a new concept has emerged in the entrepreneurship literature, entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE), to analyze the dynamics of a given territory and its outputs and impact upon entrepreneurship. Moreover, it is also well documented the close relationship between entrepreneurship and family business (FB). Keeping in mind the multidimensionality of the latter, its scholars are beginning to look into the entrepreneurial elements embedded in the family processes and the influence of context.

After an extensive literature review made, a significant gap was found, given the historical relevance that FB (SMEs the vast majority) have in the global economic systems. A FB entrepreneurial ecosystem (FBEE) model is proposed based on the data collected from two case studies, on Portugal's wine industry, and Mexico's shoe industry, both artisan industries confronted with the urge to reinvent and adapt to face deep market and industry changes.

The results should indicate the feasibility of proposing a second level on the theory of EE, the FBEE, where both the family and business itself ultimately play a vital role in its success and impact the whole system.

Wine tourism literature still falls behind other streams of research in its ability to assess phenomena associated with the implementation of digital practices to address strategic challenges. Moreover, studies on social media in tourism and hospitality prioritize the relationship between tourists’ behavioural aspects and technology. Relationships, experiences and timely responses on the digital environment are particularly important, taken the ‘new normal’ which COVID-19 necessitates. Within this framework, the present case study explores the role of social media (Facebook in specific) in the effort of Cretan wineries to respond to new encounters, as well as the importance, if any, of collaborative practices for developing online strategies of individual businesses. Findings help us identify (a) the role of the winescape studies in exploring the digital environment and (b) the main communication priorities of wineries as expressed through social media during the pandemic crisis.

In a fragmented tourism market and highly competitive industry, tourism providers aim to increase their appeal and attractiveness. Identifying opportunities and resources, which contribute to provide consumers with higher quality experiences and create added value, is challenging for entrepreneurs. This chapter aims to increase the awareness of entrepreneurs about flexible methods and tools, which are transforming the way work is performed and thus affecting management practices in the tourism industry.

Literature review was conducted on conceptual issues related to consumer experience and three case studies were analysed as best practices in the wine tourism industry

To deliver a specific consumer experience and create added value for customers, several opportunities are identified, related to authenticity and accommodation offering. Necessary resources to exploit those opportunities encompass existing (connected to the main product wine, historical buildings, family story and product characteristics) as well as newly acquired valuable resources related to the development of peripheral tourism activities.

This study is explorative in nature, based on a literature review. It takes more entrepreneurial than academic approach.

The balance between authenticity and attractiveness is a key factor of success for wineries as means to provide added value to customers.

This contribution helps to identify valuable and existing resources in order to exploit opportunities and deliver high-quality experiences to tourists. The uniqueness of this experience is crucial on building added value for customers.

This chapter examines the notion that contemporary tourists prefer luxury experiences rather than luxury products by testing the opinions and attitudes of middle-class tourists as a critical target for global luxury tourism through the lens of experience-oriented accommodation. Notions from the study were used in conceptualising a spectrum to describe the shades of grey within luxury tourism. A Japanese temple lodging known as ‘shukubo’ in Koyasan, an experience-based accommodation, was used as a case to investigate the preferences of two groups of middle-class Thai tourists: non-pilgrims and pilgrims. The results, which revealed positive opinions and attitudes towards the programme, confirm that both groups were satisfied with the luxury tourism experience programme. However, non-pilgrims, described as psychocentric tourists (represented in black at the left end of the spectrum), tended to embed them with luxury materials, such as the accommodation's facilities and amenities. Conversely, pilgrims, identified as allocentric travellers (represented in white at the right end of the spectrum), were inclined to define ‘simplicity’ as a luxury. They were also interested in learning experiences at both ‘off-the-beaten-track’ and famous branded destinations. The differences found in such an example as described above conceptualised tourists' personalities regarding luxury tourism within three shades of grey: dark grey, grey and light grey, depending on the intensity of their interests in material concerns or learning experiences. Findings from this study are general; however, it presents an original concept developed from demographic and psychographic factors to broaden the understanding of luxury tourism, which is undergoing a paradigm shift.

Concern about the agro-industrial food system has generated movements, which reconnect producers and consumers, either through alternative distribution networks or through providing histories of each quality foodstuff. Although these movements share a romantic discourse, they have a range of objectives and a more complex relationship to the mainstream than first appears. The article analyses particularly the concept of authenticity, first in representations of food, then more widely as a value which links production and consumption. The material illustrates a wider analysis (in Graeber, Harvey) of the co-existence of monetary and non-monetary value in an economy dominated by the commodity form, and following from this sets out the different judgements, which have been made about the transformative political potential of these movements.