Analyzing Cultural Tourism: Touch Points, Issues, and Solutions Report

This report provides an executive summary and detailed analysis of a food and wine festival, serving as a case study for cultural tourism. It begins with an overview of cultural tourism, emphasizing its focus on art, culture, historical sites, and events. The report maps various traveler touch points, including ticketing, parking, staff interactions, food and wine quality, and social media engagement. It identifies key issues such as long ticket queues, parking costs, lack of trained staff, subpar food quality, and social media platform problems. To address these issues, the report suggests implementing multichannel ticketing, training staff on customer service and product knowledge, managing parking costs effectively, and integrating social media platforms for increased awareness and visitor engagement. The report concludes by highlighting the importance of addressing these touch point issues to enhance customer satisfaction and promote the success of cultural tourism events.

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Emerging Issues in Hospitality and
Tourism

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Executive Summary
The report highlighted the case of a food and wine festival and reflected the different customer
touch points associated to the cultural event. It thereby identified significant issues associated to
the different touch points based on mapping the same and also in reflecting quality solutions to
the issues faced.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Overview of Cultural Tourism.....................................................................................................4
Overview of Report.....................................................................................................................4
Traveller’s touch points in Cultural Tourism..................................................................................4
Issues along the Traveller’s Touch Points.......................................................................................6
Solutions to the identified issues.....................................................................................................7
Conclusions......................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Overview of Cultural Tourism
Cultural tourism is considered as that aspect of tourism that essentially focuses on highlighting
the art and culture, places of historical interest, specific cultural events, architectural parameters
and also religious elements in terms of hosting events and programs for attracting considerable
number of tourists (Kandampully et al., 2017).
Overview of Report
The report focuses on identifying the different touch points associated to the hosting of a cultural
tourism associated event and thereby in identifying of issues associated to it and also rendering
quality solutions for resolving the issues identified.
Traveller’s touch points in Cultural Tourism
Cultural tourism in the form of festivities for food and wine associated programs and
celebrations tend to attract large number of tourists to the regions where they are held. The
festivities concerning food and wine along with the national culture of the regions not only
attract huge flow of tourists to the regions but ideally help in rendering memorable experiences
for the visitors to such tourism destinations (Aiello, 2014). The visitors to the tourism
destinations ideally focus on evaluating the regions associated to different parameters like
availability of potential facilities and amenities, infrastructural facilities and networks, existence
of large number of service providers and also the customer servicing initiatives undertaken by
the tourism ventures. The above aspects ideally contribute in the growth of large number of

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customer touch points along a specific period (Stickdorn & Zehrer, 2014). The visitors or tourists
focus on appraising and evaluating the efficiency of the different touch points in whether the
same are effective in generating customer satisfaction or not. Failure in meeting of consumer
expectations by the different touch points leads to the rise in the level of touch point gap
(Everett, 2016). The mapping of the different touch points associated to the food and wine
festival can be ideally reflected through the use of the following map.
(Liu et al., 2014)
The customer experiences reflected by the above map associated to the visit to the food and wine
festival ideally reflect that they are multimodal in nature (Fraser, 2012). Further, the level of
visitor experiences to the food and wine festival are influenced by ticketing firms and agencies,
existence of parking facilities, availability and ease of use of social media platforms, quality of

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services rendered by the hospitality staffs, quality of the food and wine products and other
atmospheric parameters like light, colour and sound (Liu et al., 2014).
Issues along the Traveller’s Touch Points
Ticketing issues: Visitors and tourists interested in visiting the cultural event tend to face
potential issues concerning standing in queues for longer periods for purchasing of tickets in that
they are not made available to the tourists along the online platform. Further, in emergence of
black marketing issues the customers face problems associated to the non-availability of tickets
that causes potential dissatisfaction.
Parking issues: Different types of parking issues like existence of high parking costs along with
the cluttering of vehicles owing to the lack of proper parking space also tends to affect the level
of customer dissatisfaction. Again, the lack of proper attitude and etiquette of the parking staffs
also tend to make the visitors annoyed (Goel et al., 2015).
Lack of trained staffs: The lack of trained staffs along the exhibition or event site concerning the
organising of the food and wine festival make matters worse for the tourists in that they fail to
get adequate information concerning the preparation and consumption benefits of the various
food and wine products. Further, lack of proper customer servicing initiatives and knowledge of
the staffs affect the level of consumer experiences based on visiting such cultural tourism sites
(Wagen & White, 2018).
Quality of the food and wine products: The non-satisfactory standards of the food and wine
products exhibited along the different stalls at the food and wine festival tend to affect the level
of customer satisfaction. The tourists thereby tend to complain of the same and feel annoyed in
that the cultural tourism event failed to meet its needed objectives (Rau, 2014).

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Problems concerning use of social networking platforms: The tourists visiting the cultural
tourism destinations feel interested in sharing the photos and videos concerning their visits and
tours along the different social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest
and YouTube. However, problems concerning the unavailability of the social networking
platforms with also chances in emergence of security issues potentially affect the intention of the
tourists and thereby cause consumer dissatisfaction (Yachin, 2018).
Solutions to the identified issues
The organisers of the food and wine festivals along the cultural tourism destinations are required
to ideally focus on incorporating multichannel platforms like website, apps developed for
Smartphones and Tablets, use of kiosks along specific areas like different retail outlets. The
different channels are needed to be constituted for selling of tickets to interested visitors and
tourists (Katsoni, 2019). Even the social networking platforms like Facebook can be extensively
used by the food and wine festival organisers for carrying out social marketing of the cultural
venues and tickets. Further, the design of the apps and the employment of social networking
platforms would ideally contribute in generating large scale awareness regarding the cultural
festival to target respondents (Katsoni, 2019).
Further, the staffs associated to the exhibition centres for food and wine products and also along
the parking facilities are required to be adequately trained for rendering quality customer
services. The staffs are required to be adequately trained associated to the knowledge of
preparation regarding food and wine and consumption benefits regarding such. The management
of the food and wine cultural venues are required to adequately manage the prices for the parking
sites such that they are needed to be made cost-effective in nature (Kiage, 2018). Moreover, the

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parking staffs are required to be adequately trained regarding management of the cars at the
parking lots such that it helps in adding of customer satisfaction. The staffs are also required to
be adequately trained for production of quality of food and wine products. The training rendered
to the staffs ideally help in enhancing their competencies for generating quality services to the
customers. Moreover, the affordability of the parking services would also help in attracting
considerable tourists to the cultural destinations in their own vehicles (Kiage, 2018).
Likewise, the management of the food and wine festivals are required to collaborate with social
networking platform such that the same helps the visitors and the staffs for posting of pictures
and videos along Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube amongst others. The same would
thereby help in generating increased awareness regarding the food and wine festival which
would thereby attract considerable number of tourists from international regions to the festival
(Goel et al., 2015).
Conclusions
The report highlighted the different touch points associated to the holding of a food and wine
festival for celebrating the culinary aspects of cultural tourism. It highlighted the different issues
associated to the different touch points and also contributed in earning effective solutions for
resolving the issues.

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References
Aiello, L., 2014. Handbook of Research on Management of Cultural Products: E-Relationship
Marketing and Accessibility Perspectives: E-Relationship Marketing and Accessibility
Perspectives. United Kingdom : IGI Global.
Everett, S., 2016. Food and Drink Tourism: Principles and Practice. United Kingdom : SAGE.
Fraser, S., 2012. Gauteng A-Z. South Africa: Penguin Random House South Africa.
Goel, V., Singh, A. & Shrivastava, S., 2015. CRM: A Winning Approach for Tourism Sector.
International Journal of Engineering and Management Research, 5(2), pp.321-25.
Kandampully, J., Zhang, T. & Jaakkola, E., 2017. Customer experience management in
hospitality: a literature synthesis, new understanding, and. International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality Management, 28(10), pp.2218-46.
Katsoni, V., 2019. Smart Tourism as a Driver for Culture and Sustainability. United Kingdom :
Springer.
Kiage, O.E., 2018. Influence of Perceived Value on Tourist Future Intentions to Creative
Tourism Attractions in Kenya’s North Coast. Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Management,
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Liu, W., Sparks, B. & Coghlan, A., 2014. Mapping customer experiences: An examination of
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Rau, P.L.P., 2014. Cross-Cultural Design: 6th International Conference, CCD 2014, Held as
Part of HCI International 2014, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, June 22-27, 2014, Proceedings.

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United Kingdom : Springer.
Stickdorn, M. & Zehrer, A., 2014. Service Design in Tourism: Customer Experience Driven
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Innovation. Oslo, 2014.
Wagen, L.V.d. & White, L., 2018. Event Management: For Tourism, Cultural, Business and
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Yachin, J.M., 2018. The ‘customer journey’: Learning from customers in tourism experience
encounters. Tourism Management Perspectives, 28, pp.201-10.