Service Quality at the Cellar Door: A Comparison Between Regions

The provision of service at the cellar door is now beginning to attract some attention, which is critical given that wine tourism is a very lucrative industry with the ability to generate substantial wealth and growth. This paper develops the application of the SERVQUAL research approach, already used in Margaret River, and applies it to the Barossa Valley. It outlines the results of a survey in the latter region, and draws some comparative conclusions with the Western Australian data. It produces some conclusions about those features deemed important by visitors in their overall satisfaction ratings of the cellar door experience including the impact of that experience on subsequent purchase behaviour, and it also highlights some of the differences between wine tourists in the two states.