Wine Tourism in South Africa: Valued Attributes and Their Role as Memorable Enticements

This chapter uses South Africa as a point of reference to assess the value visitors’ place on wine and gastronomic attributes, how these relate to pre-visit expectations, and the potential for enticing future visits. First, the chapter provides an overview of the wine and gastronomy of South Africa. Next, survey results are used to formulate a proposed model of wine tourism. Relationships are proposed from tourism attribute importance and expectations, to touristic terroir, hospitality, authenticity, and quality of wine tourism products, systems, and experiences. These impact overall satisfaction, whether these translate into memorable experiences, and desired consumer behaviors (return visits, word of mouth, recommendations, social media, or future product purchases). Findings suggest that wine-specific activities, authentic food, and related activities appear to have the greatest potential for increasing the memorability of the experience, serve as important enticements for return visits, and provide opportunities for visitors to serve as social media apostles. For South Africa, wine-specific activities included wine tastings, wine variety/value/quality, and wine terroir/regions/settings. For wine tastings, visitors spoke to its quality and affordability. Visitors listed specific grape varietals, the quality of the wines and specific styles such as sweet dessert wines. Wine regions provided a positive impression based on beautiful landscapes, specific wineries, and the South African terroir. Wine tourism activities and local gastronomic experiences appear to be perceived as delighter attributes or wows, whereas hospitality service aspects appear more likely to be “must be” attributes. Implications for wine region success and future research are provided.