Exploring Wine Terroir Experiences: A Social Media Analysis

Abstract

The present study seeks to better understand wine terroir experiences as reported by visitors of a Portuguese wine region, namely Bairrada in Central Portugal that has also been dynamized through a wine tourism route develop- ment. The here presented approach focuses on experiences lived by visitors of this territory and correspondingly reported on Tripadvisor, an intensely used social media site with multiple, shared information on trips, destinations, tour- ism services and vacation or leisure experiences. It is correspondingly frequently used for travel planning and is recognized as significantly impacting destination image development and travel decision-making. For the present study a total of 137 comments reported on Tripadvisor regarding Bairrada experiences from 2019 to 2020 were analyzed using NVivo, following rigorous reliability pro- cedures. Results show the role of wine, tangible cultural heritage and natural landscapes in providing emotionally gratifying, memorable and recommendable wine terroir experiences in Bairrada, with wine interestingly associated to a diversity of experience dimensions. To avoid negative experiences, professional services and quality facilities seem to be paramount.