Mitologías de la vida cotidiana

tour-ism seasonality, this is only part of the explanation for the patterns of winery visitation. A number of supply-side issues also have a signifi-cant impact on the timing of visits to wineries.

Resourcing Dilemma

Cooper et al. (1993), suggest that a “striking feature” of tourism and agriculture is that they are both subject to seasonal variations in activity,

166 WINE, FOOD, AND TOURISM MARKETING

150%

140%

130%

120%

110%

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

PercentageofRespondents

no or basic knowledge intermediate advanced Level of knowledge

Summer Autumn Winter Spring

FIGURE 6. Wine Knowledge Breakdown of Preferred Time of Year to Visit Wineries

insinuating that businesses which combine both agriculture and tourism are likely to have compounded seasonal effects. Cooper et al. (1993, p. 132) continue that “any business subject to seasonal variations in de-mand for its output is faced with a dilemma.” The dilemma is whether to resource the business to cope with peak demand and output (and there-fore over resource for much of the year) or to estimate average demand and try to cope with periods of high demand. This is especially signifi-cant for New Zealand wineries, where 93% of wineries are small pro-ducers (New Zealand Winegrowers, 2002) and therefore have less capacity to manage the limited resources available to them. One of the strategies employed to minimize resourcing conflicts, whether by de-sign or not, is for wineries to reduce the emphasis on the cellar door at times of high vineyard and winery activity and to increase it during low activity.

The Progress of Nature

The progress of nature in the vineyard is also an important consider-ation, as it has significant implications for resources and has a strong correlation with the preferences for visiting. This latter point is reflec-tive of the vineyard setting as an important attraction for visitors (i.e., al fresco dining and the setting and scenery associated with winery visits), which is at its most appealing phase during summer (e.g., vines in full bloom) and early autumn (e.g., colored foliage). Johnson (1999: 70) suggests that:

Opening times for wineries . . . reflect the progress of nature. Dur-ing the winter months vines become dormant and bereft of leaves, bud burst occurs in late spring and flowering in November-De-cember (New Zealand Geographic and Montana Wines 1997).

Grapes grow over the summer months to be harvested in autumn (as early as March and as late as May, and even into June in Otago). Opening times tend to be longer when vines are active or grapes are harvested. Opening hours are at their peak during the summer months when grapes are developing on the vine.

As a result of the progress of nature, the harvest months, perhaps the shoulder season with the greatest of Getz’s (2000) opportunities to de-velop wine tourism products (e.g., harvest festivals, wine making dem-onstrations and simply the most interesting time to visit for those interested to learn more about wine making), also have the highest

de-mand on a winery’s resources. Perhaps a little surprisingly, the winter months, the time of the year with the lowest demand on resources, also present few opportunities for expansion of visitation. Not only is the vineyard bare and winery activity low, but many winemakers and vitculturalists take the opportunity to expand their skills and knowledge by travelling to a northern hemisphere winery to work on a vintage, while seasonal labor (both from the wine industry and tourism and hos-pitality sector) moves to regions and centres where other seasonal work is available. This leaves human resources at a premium and the ability to minimize seasonal troughs is reduced. In New Zealand a possible ex-ception to this is Central Otago, where a strong winter tourist season, based on the local ski industry, might provide the necessary demand and strong local labor market for expansion of off-season services. To date, however, demand for winter visitation in this region appears to be light, once again reflecting the unattractiveness of vineyards and wineries during the winter months.

Other Outlets for Wine Sales

While many wineries see cellar door operations as an important part of their business function (Johnson’s (1998) finding that 75 percent of New Zealand wineries rated the cellar door as extremely or very impor-tant to sales), this is just one outlet for the wine that they produce. The most popular place of purchase amongst New Zealand winery visitors is the supermarket (Mitchell & Hall, 2001b), but wineries also distribute their wine through retail wine and liquor stores, restaurants, wholesal-ers and export markets. As a result Johnson (1998) found that the cellar door sales accounted for an average of just 20 percent of revenue for New Zealand wineries, but this was as little as 9 percent or as much as 37 percent, depending on the region of the winery.

Further, New Zealand wineries have been reluctant to invest in tour-ism-related infrastructure, despite recognizing its importance (Hall et.

al., 2000). Hall et al. (2000, p. 157) suggest that the reasons for this are several-fold but stress that it is clearly related to the opportunity costs of spending scarce time and money on cellar door facilities at the expense of “. . . developing more traditional distribution channels and produc-tion expansion that may also lead to greater sales in the future.” As a re-sult of this attitude toward cellar door investment and the focus on other distribution channels winery owners have little motivation to mitigate the adverse effects of seasonal variations in cellar door visitation.

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CONCLUSION:

A MODEL OF WINERY VISITATION SEASONALITY