Predicting the future of wine tourism

We have explained so far the theory behind the Delphi Method in relation to how you implement it, how you need to follow specific principles to make the technique and the procedure robust. And what are the different variations that you can have Let’s see an example in terms of how you can implement the Delphi Method. We will have a look at the wine tourism field. The example I’m going to give you relates to a study within the wine tourism field. The purpose of the Delphi study was to ask experts about what is the future of the wine industry? How is it going to evolve and what will be the challenges of the future?

We identify a great variety of experts representing different fields, different perspectives, because as I mentioned before, it is very important to have a great variation and a good representation of panel. The panel consisted of wine tourism leaders from the industry representing sell stores, restaurants, tour operators, hotels, bus owners, and different cafeterias in the wine destination. We have also included tourists and of course, the managers managing the wine destinations. And we ask the experts about their opinion. First of all, what are the important issues that are going to become influential in the wine industry? What is the likelihood that every issue is going to happen within what time? and what is the significant impact of every issue?

And who is going to be affected?

The results of the Delphi study are very important, not only to the industry to inform the professionals how they have to innovate and change their practices, but equally important for researchers looking into their agendas about wine research and what they have to study in the future.

So what is the Methodology we have followed to implement the Delphi study? Well, we did it in several rounds. In the first one, we use the famous PEST framework, which represents political, economic, environmental, societal and technological factors, to ask the panelists to identify what are the important trends, opportunities, issues, and challenges within every field, the political, economical, and so on.

The facilitator received all the answers from the experts, and he tried to consolidate their opinions. He did this by doing a qualitative data analysis and by grouping the opinion of experts into common themes

In the second round, the facilitator sent these things back to the experts, and he asked them to give their opinions about two issues. First of all, the likelihood that every issue is going to happen. And secondly, the significance of the impact of this factor on the industry

On the second round, the facilitator get back to the experts and he gave them the feedbacks about the list of issues they were identifying, their significance and likelihood of occuring. Then he asked the experts to rank the factors and the issues in terms of their importance. And the third round of the Delphi Method was important for making a check point list to make sure that the experts agree, or they don’t want to revise their opinion they gave in the second round.

While implementing the Delphi technique, we have to address a major issue. How do we motivate experts to come back to us on a timely manner of course, give good opinions and reliable answers. Well, as in all research Methodologies, we have to give an incentive. The incentive can be accessing to the final results of the study, but also the opportunity to take part in a competition and get some gifts and rewards, like free bottles of wine or a gift voucher from a retailer.