Wine production and tourism - Essay Example

Focusing on wine tourism as a growing area of business, the researcher laid the background on the premise that, the key to the continued growth and success of wineries in the world's wine producing region is in meeting customer's expectations and wine products attributes.Using an importance performance analysis, the study revealed how well an operation performs with respect to the attributes most important to guests. The study focused on 353 visitors to wineries and used modified SERVQUAL methodology; The study also offers a chance for the Tourists to taste wineries premium products.

In recent years, the growth in tourism in the world's wine producing regions has grown rapidly. This has not only attracted the attention of researchers with increasing attention on various aspects of wine tourism, but has attracted the flow of international capital towards this direction. Wine tourism today is widely acknowledged as a growing area of special interest as agued by the researcher.The main problem statement of the research is defined within three folds. Firstly the study focused on visitors' perceptions of the service received at the cellar door-that is, at the winery-and the effect of that service on consumer satisfaction, brand loyalty, and long-term behavioral intention.

The study addressed further, the issue of customer service in the emerging wine-tourism sector. Thus an important objective of the study is the definition of the concept of wine tourism as it analysed the linkages between wine quality and brand values, as well as the role of a visit to the cellar door in reinforcing these linkages. Another objective of this paper is the identification of the attributes of service quality as they apply to visits to wineries. 1.2 Research Methods and Design In the study, the researcher adopted a largely quantitative approach to identify significant trends among current visitors to wineries.

The researcher however, criticized the method as not well suited to exploring the underlying symbolism or meaning of a visit to a winery34 or to gaining a deep understanding of the needs and motivations that lead individuals to visit a winery. Such an approach would form a future avenue of inquiry, and our quantitative survey may indicate questions that could usefully be explored with deeper qualitative research. 1.3 Findings of Research The researcher ran a series of T-tests and evaluated where mean performance scores differed significantly from the mean importance scores.

The findings revealed a high degree of colinearity within the results for both the perception and the importance measures. According to the researcher, the result presented true accurate reflections of Visitor's perception when recorded. Results of the study also showed operators in the wineries are marginally underperforming as visitors proofed to be unhappy with the quality of wine offered for tasting, as most premium wines were out of stock and the wine tasting fees were high. The study came out with many exciting findings.

The study first of all found out that Operators do seem to be experiencing some difficulty, though, with respect to the relational aspects of the cellar-door experience. This interesting finding reinforced the importance of