My Winescape Journal
Experience Design in Wine Tourism
CONTEXT- As the wine industry keeps growing there is a trend in the search for wine destination experiences. Moreover, there is a concern to understand not only who the wine tourist is but how wine country destinations can enhance their experiences when it comes to visiting the wine region. It is said that the customer experience is what makes the success of the tourism products, therefore, here is when practical application of service design, its tools and methods of co-creation could bring a different approach to wine touristic products, adding value to what marketing is already doing. The application is shown through the case study area in Mendoza wine country. Mendoza is one of the most important argentinian cities for its wines quality and spectacular landscapes at the feet of The Andes. The wine and tourism industries have developed really fast in the last ten years, significantly increasing the number of visitors each year. This “new world” wine country destination is now competing worldwide with the most important wine destinations countries in the world.
PROJECT- It was the first time that someone introduces the 'service design' thinking-process in wine tourism activities in Mendoza, anticipating the need of designing systems and creating value in wine products and services. The project was awarded with the International Research Grant by the Great Wine Capitals Global Network in San Francisco. For this research it was used an experiential approach and wants to show how design methodologies could be relevant in order to identify customer expectations and provide customer satisfaction in wine tourism products. In this direction a new tool was designed and prototyped. This tool fits new ways of visiting, experiencing and promoting wine tourism destinations. The project includes an application (B2C) called ‘My Winescape Journal’ that works as a mobile ethnography tool and consists in collecting customer’s emotional and narrative data that could help the winery marketing manager and team, in a second step and through a membership and platform, to plan touch-points in order to improve their services and interactions with other stakeholders (B2B).
-Mendoza, Argentina-