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Several studies in management science have called for a better understanding of the experience economy approach to develop wine tourism. Few studies, however, have analysed experiential dimensions in the context of French wine-growing regions. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the difference between what wine tourism providers consider relevant in their market offer and what customers expect from their wine tourism experience. A new categorisation of wine tourists’ expectations based on Pine and Gilmore’s (1998) four realms model and Quadri-Felliti and Fiore’s model (2012) are developed.

A mixed methodology, qualitatively analysing 17 semi-structural interviews with the main wine tourism stakeholders in the Alsace region in north-east France and quantitatively analysing 233 questionnaires on wine tourists’ expectations and behaviours are adopted.

The study reveals a difference between experiential offers predicated on an educational approach and the explicit expectations of wine tourists (combining aesthetics, conviviality and authenticity, whose central focus is an encounter with the winemaker). Overall, the findings point to a need for greater inclusion of the experiential aspect in the offer designed for wine tourists.

The study identifies a gap between the educational dimension that professionals tend to promote in their offers and the real expectations of wine tourists who express more interest in the aesthetic dimension provided by an attractive visit environment and an enjoyable experience. At the heart of the authentic experience for wine tourists is meeting the winegrower, making authenticity a major factor.

With increasing wine consumption in Armenia, both residents and inbound tourists have become attractive target groups for wine sales, which are stimulated by wine tourism activities. The objective of this explorative study is to shed light on the potential of wine tourism for rural development in Armenia.

The paper starts with a structured and interdisciplinary literature review. Based on qualitative surveys among local tour operators and wine producers, and complemented by three expert interviews, the offer of wine tourism activities in Armenia will then be analyzed.

Each of the surveyed wine producers offers wine tourism activities. Foreign tourists know little about the Armenian wine industry, however, and are interested in cultural experiences and Armenia’s breathtaking nature. Armenian wine producers need to understand the expectations of their target groups to develop or adapt their offers successfully.

Due to the explorative nature of this study, the sample size of the surveyed wineries and tour operators is small and hence not representative. In addition, only local tour operators were surveyed. The sample should be extended to include foreign tour operators and more wineries in future research projects.

Whereas first studies on the structure and competitiveness of the Armenian wine sector exist, there is no survey on the general wine tourism in Armenia and its potential to foster rural development.

Using an econometric approach, this study aims to examine Mid-Atlantic USA wine consumers’ willingness to participate in winery or vineyard tours based on their wine knowledge, wine drinking occasions, demographical factors, past experience with wine tourism and wine purchasing behaviors.

An internet-based consumer survey (N = 977) conducted 22-24 October 2014 was used to collect data. The screening criteria for the survey participants were: 1) being a resident of the Mid-Atlantic region (New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, USA), 2) at least 21 years old, 3) not an industry member, and 4) having purchased and consumed wine within the past year. In addition to descriptive statistics, a logistic regression was used to estimate consumers’ willingness to participate in winery or vineyard tours. Independent variables were categorized into five groups: sources of wine knowledge, wine drinking occasions, demographical factors, past experience and wine purchasing behaviors.

With 736 valid observations, the logistic regression shows that males are more likely to be interested in winery or vineyard tours, while young adults (<25 years old) are less likely. Learning about wines from winery tasting room staff members, from wine magazines or from local and regional magazines are the top three positive influencers on interest in these activities. Past wine tourism experience in the Mid-Atlantic region, drinking wine as an everyday beverage and giving wines as gifts also show a positive relationship with likelihood of participating in these activities.

Study results can help the Mid-Atlantic wine industry understand wine tourists’ behaviors and preferences. Advertising in wine magazines and local and regional magazines can be used to target wine consumers interested in winery or vineyard tours. Attributes (i.e. past experience with wine tourism and gaining knowledge from winery tasting room staff) that are related to the quality of wine tourism experience were identified. Participants were also interested in purchasing wine from the winery during or after participating in wine tourism activities; therefore, wineries should focus on guest interactions to encourage such purchases.

This survey collected data from both consumers who had or who lacked wine tourism experience, which allowed us to gather input from wine drinkers who had not necessarily visited tasting rooms. This survey instrument can be used to collect data from wine consumers residing in regions where the presence of wineries and wine tourism is low, which can provide insight that otherwise might be influenced by currently offered wine tourism activities. This paper uses an econometric approach to understand consumer interests in wine tourism in the Mid-Atlantic region and provides a comprehensive, clear and informative profile of likely wine tourism participants who reside in a region that has not been studied comprehensively.

The aim of this paper is to apply the SERVQUAL model to evaluate the quality perceived by customers in the context of family hotel management in Portugal. More specifically, to assess the influence of interpersonal relationships (service providers and customers) in family business services in the wine tourism segment (i.e. wine hotel and spa). In this way, it aims to provide data that can support this family hotel to reinforce the quality of the services provided to guests and therefore their satisfaction and loyalty.

The statistical techniques, using Microsoft Excel 2016^® and SPSS Statistics 25.0^®, were multivariate for the analysis and validation of the results. In this analysis it can be seen that except the empathy dimension, in which the evaluation of perceived quality is positive, i.e. customer perceptions were higher than expectations, the remaining dimensions of the SERVQUAL model were negative. The safety dimension ranked second, followed by service delivery dimensions, problem solving and tangibility.

The results show that the empathy dimension positively influences the evaluation of the perceived quality and thus also the satisfaction and loyalty of guests to the family hotel in the wine tourism segment. So, it is recommended that the hotel management of this family hotel reinforces service quality by investing in the improvement of physical facilities, problem-solving capacity, and service delivery, to obtain higher levels of perceived quality service and hence customer satisfaction and loyalty and, simultaneously, increase its performance and organizational sustainability.

In addition to the direct contributions to the hotel management of this family business hotel, this study contributes to the development of the marketing scientific area, tourism and hospitality industry.

Several studies argue that the competitive advantage of the hotel business is based on the creation of value and of experiences for the customer, but in the context of family hotels, the creation of value for the customer is even more relevant, given the characteristics of this type of business, such as its small size and the reduced number of employees. Family hotels should invest in tools and techniques that allow them to create value for the customer through the quality of service offered to their guests.

This paper aimed to evaluate perceived quality in the context of family hotel management in Portugal. In particular, the contribution of interpersonal relationships (between service providers and guests), in hotel services in the wine tourism segment in Portugal. According to the analysis of the results of the exploratory study to Hotel context, it was concluded that there are differences between the perceptions and expectations of hotel guests.

Wine tourism is a growing segment of the tourism industry. Wine tourists are not a homogeneous group, but seek differing components of the overall wine tourism experience. This research evaluates their demand for an educational element in the overall process, within Australia. Personal surveys were carried out in two wine regions in Western Australia. Respondents were questioned on their previous experience of wine education, the possibilities for learning at the cellar door, the benefits of wine education, and how far their expectations for wine education had been met. The research yielded findings from which broad visitor profiles of the Western Australian wine tourist can be constructed, as well as general conclusions on the provision of wine education at the cellar door. Some variation between responses from the two regions are also reported.

Social media use has increased in recent years, and businesses are looking to capitalize on the plethora of marketing opportunities afforded by this digital shift by paying attention to user-generated content (UGC) posted on review websites. Leveraging UGC can help small businesses gain a competitive advantage over late-adopters. At the same time, there is evidence to suggest that small businesses do not have the time, resources or skill level to properly use social media to create a competitive advantage. This paper aims to explore how wine tourism businesses can analyze consumer feedback on online review websites to evaluate customer perceptions and expectations and generate more effective ways to improve customer satisfaction.

The qualitative method of thematic analysis was used to map out consumer reviews online to assess service satisfaction and dissatisfaction. A total of 848 reviews were gathered and qualitatively analyzed from two online review websites (TripAdvisor.com and Yelp.com) using open and axial coding and thematic analysis.

The results show that wine consumers are interested in the hedonic aspects of their experience, are most often attracted to wineries as a special outing and focus on factors such as scenery and atmosphere, service quality and products in their reviews. Hence, service and sales personnel have a key opportunity to capitalize on generating better service experiences through social media analysis.

The present study fills a gap by providing a more in-depth, qualitative exploration of the wine consumers’ psychology and experience, including factors such as atmosphere and special occasions. Furthermore, this study uses interpretive, manual coding to pick up on nuanced themes that are often missed by using automated qualitative analysis software or by looking at frequency counts in isolation.

The purpose of this study is to provide insight into characteristics of visitor demand for a regionally oriented vinotheque (wine bar and shop) at a UNESCO world heritage destination in Germany. The research especially focuses on expected offer components for a wine bar and shop, including wine-related products and services, to test the theoretical notion of blurred division between product and service offerings. The literature review has revealed that implications of this conceptual notion on wine bar and shop offer creation could be profound as there are different types of wine bar and shops with different product–service combinations. Moreover, the offer creation needs to take into account the overall needs of wine bar and shop visitors and consider them as experience seekers and not necessarily utility-maximizing players. In this sense, the paper expands previous research on vinotheques that primarily took the wine retail perspective.

The study deals with wine-related sales, offer design and the importance of tourism and hospitality for wine sales in a non-growing wine market. However, the concept of increasing wine sales through tourism and hospitality brings to the forefront the issues of creating integrated offerings of products and services. This is why, the study deploys the concepts of hybrid products and experience economy. The primary data have been collected via self-administered, paper-based questionnaire (Appendix 2) amongst visitors at the St. Goar/Loreley tourist destination. The goal has been to reveal the importance of a wine bar and shop as a wine sales channel, whether visitors are interested in visiting a wine bar and shop, what major expectations they have entering a vinotheque, as well as what major offer components of products and/or services are they interested in. Total sample size was N = 400. Major statistical procedure deployed was descriptive statistics, as well as PCA (principal component analysis) of expectations and offer analysis in regards to products and services.

By deploying the PCA on the data regarding interest in buying wine-related products and services, three offer configurations have been extracted, out of which only one is purely related to products, whilst the other two are hybrid products, meaning a combination of wine-related products and services. Relevance of architectural design illustrates that visitors also seek experience. These findings confirm previously discussed theories on the importance of integrating products and services into hybrid products and creating experience with a suitable combination of products and services.

Data collection has taken place in a confined timeframe (two summer months). No active measures have been taken to ensure the validity of the sample through quotas or similar techniques. The research sample and location are somewhat limited for making conclusions in other geographical regions, but replicating the study in different contexts can add to the comparability of the results on the level of Germany, but also internationally. The empirical evidence for superior customer value of hybrid offerings and integrating services into product-centric offer design is of paramount importance for selling wine in a highly competitive market in absence of market growth. Wine bar and shop allows to differentiate the offer by creating wine-related experience through a combination of product (wine and wine-related products), hospitality/gastronomic services and tourism services. The insights also illustrate the idea of new market opportunities via connecting converging industries.

The study contributes to close a gap identified in the literature review that German wineries lag wine-tourism activities. It provides advice in regards to offer design and hybrid offerings and an experiential experience supported by architectural design. Such an approach offers the potential to win market share in a non-growing market – an ambition of the players in the market but also an obvious challenge.

The findings contribute to regional development. Furthermore, arguments for cooperative behavior are provided. This should also help to minimize free ridership and its negative social implications.

The paper adopts a multidisciplinary approach to the creation of wine bar and shop offer. The results point out that offerings should be created around a core wine tourism product – regional and cellar door offer – and be expanded by “food design” – components, attractive architectural elements, as well as web shop services, thereby creating an advanced wine-related experience. It confirms the importance of theoretical concepts such as experience economy, hybrid products and solution provision in the case of wine bar and shop, by testing these concepts on the group of visitors at a German wine and cultural destination.

This study aims to investigate driving factors for wine tourists to revisit Indian vineyards. It explores the motivation for Indians engaged in wine tourism and specific behaviors related thereto. Framed in the theory of planned behavior, this paper proposes a conceptual model of revisit intentions for wine tourism. This model covers environmental concerns, escapism, countryside lifestyle, entertainment and spillovers of international traveling as direct antecedents for the revisit intentions.

A quantitative approach was adopted for this research. Data was gathered through a standardized questionnaire from 141 vineyard tourists in Nashik, India and evaluated by fitting a structural equation model.

Important drivers for wine tourists revisit intentions are countryside lifestyle and spillovers of international travel. Notably, entertainment does not have a significant direct effect, but a substantial impact moderated by escapism. Environmental concerns have a negative impact. The escapism component is the most influential motivation for revisiting the Indian vineyards.

The attractiveness of vineyards visits in contrast to nearby tourist attractions needs to be clarified, e.g. by calibrating gravitation models.

Escapism is a substantial antecedent for the revisit intention of the vineyards while environmental concerns are its major barrier.

Countryside lifestyle contributes to overcoming the disadvantage of the contemporary hectic society of the Indian middle class and preserving Indian roots along with modernizing lifestyles.

The first evidence of Indian wine tourists revisits intentions. The current research fills a research gap by examining India’s wine tourism phenomenon.

Based on the theoretical debates involving authenticity and consumer behavior intentions, this exploratory research study aims to identify whether the authentic experiences of tourists visiting wineries affect their behavioral intentions.

A self-administered questionnaire was created to address authenticity issues within the context of the on-site winery experience and how they ultimately affected behavioral intentions according to selected demographic characteristics. Adapting Wang’s categorization of authenticity as being composed of three dimensions, a total of 13 questions were developed and used to obtain consumer data. To determine whether these three dimensions related to authenticity affected visitors’ behavioral intentions within the context of the winery experience, a standard multiple regression procedure was used at a levels = 0.05 and 0.01.

The findings show that authentic characteristics play a substantial role in the behavioral intentions of winery tourists. Interestingly, there were no significant relationships between a visitor’s willingness to recommend wineries and the on-site winery experience, presentation of wine bottle labeling and impressions about the overall winery experience.

Because this was an exploratory study, repeated applications of this experiment must be conducted in many other global destinations where winery visits occur, to establish generalizable research findings. Future applications of this research study should consider introducing new variables to further measure authenticity related to on-site winery visits, not only to build upon these study findings but also to assist the wine industry marketing professionals in acquiring a better understanding of the relationship between authenticity, as related to on-site winery visits, and the behavioral intentions of winery visitors.

This study’s findings will help to better understand the behavioral intentions of winery visitors based upon the perceived authenticity levels of on-site winery experiences. The results provide strategic and developmental directions for wine industry professionals, winery owners, wine producers and wine destination marketing organizations to more accurately promote winery visits, products and destinations.

Although authenticity and wine tourism have both received much attention as research topics, no research, to date, has addressed the importance of perceived authenticity, as applied to the on-site winery visit, within the overall wine tourism experience and its effect upon visitor intentions. This study endeavored to quantify the attributes of authenticity that are specific to winery tourism and consumer behavior issues.

This research investigated wine tourism development and marketing in southwest Michigan, a longtime viticultural, but emerging wine tourism region. The aims involved discovering the motivations, expectations, and successes of Southwest Michigan Wine Trail member wineries in developing horizontal and vertical alliances.

Semi‐structured, in‐depth interviews were conducted with individuals in charge of the wineries’ marketing activities (i.e. marketing directors and members of the marketing departments, winery owners). These interviews were recorded and transcribed. Activities fostered through the horizontal and vertical alliances were identified.

Alliances along the Southwest Michigan Wine Trail have furthered the development and marketing of wine tourism. The trail's member wineries have formed strong horizontal relationships, which include joint advertising, promotion, and production. They have also built vertical relationships with tour operators, lodging businesses, and restaurants that promote individual wineries as well as the wine region. Wine tourism has provided wineries with another sales outlet and established the wine region as a destination.

This study contributed to the limited literature on the development and marketing of wine tourism in Michigan and in other emerging wine regions in the United States. For those working to further such rural/agri‐tourism, this research indicated that there is considerable growth potential through an increased presence in restaurants and in packaging with accommodations. Adding new specialized wine tours, wine festivals,geographical target markets, and a focus on wine education on‐site and at educational institutions can expand wine tourism and sales.