The Future of the Wine Tourism Experience: The Potential of Smart(er) Winescapes?

Abstract

While the wine tourism sector has seen a steady technological evolution over the last several decades, wineries engaged in wine tourism still tend to lag the developments found elsewhere in the broader tourism sector. Contemporary wine tourists have high expectations concerning technology-enabled independent travel. Therefore, wineries wishing to effectively participate in tourism must continue to advance and leverage technology to improve their ability to deliver positive customer experiences. However, there is a gap in our understanding of the potentials for technology and experiences in wine tourism because research has mainly focused on the use of the internet for product marketing or the use of social media as a customer interface. This has resulted in a gap in our understanding of the full capability of technology to support wine tourism experiences. This is especially critical given that wine tourism experiences consist of a multiplicity of touchpoints, and many interactions lie outside the control of an individual winery. So, we argue that the most efficacious way to exploit these technologies is to develop them within a connected and smart(er) winescape. To that end, this chapter employs a customer-journey proposition model to identify the various customer-touchpoints where technology can be employed to support or enhance customer experiences. The chapter continues by exploring the possibilities in widening the range of technologies for the creation of smart winescapes. The use of these technologies means that wine businesses and other stakeholders in the smart winescape need to rethink their business models. Rather than being grounded solely in a competitive context, wineries will need to embrace a more collaborative approach. The way forward will require working with other businesses in the ecosystem to provide exceptional wine tourism experiences through the judicious use of technology. Finally, the chapter suggests future considerations for wineries and wine tourism researchers as the move to smart(er) winescapes advances.