This construct of wine tourism also encompasses the visiting of wine and food festivals. Wine and food festivals are included in the definition of wine tourism as these special events enhance wine tourism opportunities for destinations. Research has shown that such festivals provide both the destinations and the wine producers with many positive promotional outcomes. For the producers, wine festival is a profitable way to promote brands to new customers, an opportunity to interact with these customers and gain feedback from them so it is a good opportunity to build customer loyalty (Getz 2000; Bruwer 2003). For wine regions and destinations, wine festivals provide opportunities for creating awareness of regional wine brands, promoting the attractiveness of wine-growing regions (Getz 2000; Bruwer 2002, 2003; Beverland, Hoffman, and Rasmussen 2001), and encouraging repeat tourist visitation to a region (Hall 2003). Because of the benefits of wine festivals to positively promote both winemakers and wine-growing regions and affect the sustainability and profitability of tourism to an area (Hall 2003), there has been a noticeable increase in the number of wine festivals all around the US (Carlsen …show more content…
For example, in some situations, the interaction between customers is generally described as noise or disturbance (Whiting, 2009), occurring waiting line issues (Hui, Thakor & Gill, 1998; Zhou & Soman, 2008) or critical incidents in services delivery (Grove & Fisk, 1997; Zhang, Beautty & Mothersbaugh, 2010). Contrary to this, in other situations, crowds can trigger positive experiences for consumers and positive return for businesses. For instance, dense sporting events or retail outlets can make higher levels of excitement and positively influence consumers’ service experience (Machleit et al., 2000; Pons et al., 2006). In addition, busy restaurants are often perceived as having higher levels of reputation and food quality (Tse, Sin & Yim, 2002). Finally, crowds can help attract people and be highly positive in contexts such as events, tourism or attractions (Manning, Valliere, Minteer, Wang & Jacobi, 2000; Mowen, Vogelsong & Graefe, 2003). Because its polarized results even in the same industry, further study should be done to explain “why” it happens, and “how much” perceived crowding impact on visitor’s response.
Lastly, diverse research about festival study adopted field study for their research method. Although it has advantages of yielding very detailed and specific event data, there has a generalization problem.