Examining the Influence of the Wine Festival Experience on Tourists’ Quality of Life

Hosting events and festivals is the best way of providing the wine tourism experience. Wine festivals offer a wide range of
experiences that are different from day-to-day living, offer a lifestyle package and are an indicator of lifestyle tourism
experience. Tourists travel to wine festivals for wine and other leisure-related experiences, including opportunities for
social and/or cultural experiences, interactivity and personal development. Therefore, wine festivals should provide an experience
that can influence the quality of life (QoL) of the attending tourist. QoL is influenced by various life domains, which include
social, leisure and recreational, intellectual, culinary, and travel life. By its nature, a wine festival is able to influence
life domains, thereby decreasing or increasing the level of satisfaction with QoL, according to the level of satisfactory
experience. The purpose of this article is to examine the influence of the wine festival experience on the QoL of attending
tourists. The structural relationship between the wine festival experience on tourists’ QoL is shown in a structural equation
model (SEM), which is based on the notion that the QoL of attending tourists will be influenced by their level of satisfaction
in various life domains. A self-administrated questionnaire was distributed during the Wacky Wine Festival in Robertson South
Africa. The data from 329 (N) eligible questionnaires was cleaned, captured and analysed using SPSS. Furthermore, Amos was
used to test the structural model providing statistical support. From the study’s findings, managerial recommendations were
made with the aim of maximising attending wine tourists’ QoL. The research contributes to the literature related to QoL.