Adapting for Resilience: Exploring the Advent of Virtual Experiences in Pandemic-era Wine Tourism Offerings

Abstract

When nations across the world were brought to an abrupt hiatus by the ravaging pandemic, the tourism industry was left in a quagmire. Tourism ventures were faced with the option of either suffering through an onslaught of hardships; while hoping to be relieved of it soon or adapting for resilience in order to cushion the blow. If they choose the latter, the conventional playbook of experience offerings and customer interactions had to be reinvented. It was a choice that the wine tourism sectors in America and Europe made; a choice that charted its course towards embracing the attributes of virtual tourism. Wineries curated virtual vineyard tours, hosted virtual tastings and conducted virtual interactions over wine. Although these virtual experiences did not exude the panache of being present in the midst of a vineyard or winery's immersive atmosphere, virtual wine tourism became increasingly popular. This newfound popularity and its outcome of garnering new clientele for wines and wine tours, in turn, boosted competitiveness in virtual experience offerings amongst wineries and wine regions. Despite this phenomenal adaptation of the wine tourism sector for resilience, there have been few peer- reviewed studies examining the enrichment of the sector through virtual experiences during the pandemic. The paper, thereby, explores the trajectory of virtual experiences in the pandemic battered wine tourism sector and the influence of such experiences in shaping consumers’ appreciation of wines and wine destinations. The paper discusses the failings and challenges of incorporating virtual experiences in wine tourism, along with appraising the future forward of using such experiences in the sector. Keywords: tourism digitalisation, virtual tourism, virtual wine experiences, virtual wine tasting, virtual wine tours