Consuming Location: The Sustainable Impact of Transformational Experiential Culinary and Wine Tourism in Chianti Italy
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This study interrogates the processes of transformative tourism experiences in food and wine tourism and its effects on educating for sustainability. By using narrative storytelling of food and wine terroir the authors garner a clear understanding of the potential for co-learning sustainability among both hosts and guests. The overarching research question asks how the transformational potential of experiential wine and culinary tourism best promotes sustainability in the context of international educational travel. The authors set out to explore the ways in which experiential education in wine and food tourism can boost the well-being of destinations, wine providers, and wine tourists alike and the results point toward a ‘hopeful tourism’ that is participatory, co-transformative, and mindfully sustainable. In 2013, an experiential, international field course in sustainable food, wine and tourism was developed at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada with the ideals of providing a transformational tourist experience that trains students to understand, account for, and respect the places, cultures and traditional knowledge that sustains food and wine systems. The UBC field course has now run four times, instructed by co-author Senese and hosted by the de Renzis Sonnino family at Castello Sonnino Education Centre in Montespertoli, in Tuscany Italy. The case study demonstrates that wine and food tourism goes beyond the aesthetic, hedonistic, and economic impacts of rational tourism inquiry described by Pritchard . Wine and food tourism experiences are formed and shaped out of the cultural fabric of the landscape, including both the foodscape and the winescape’s ecosystem The multi-sensory value of these landscapes as demonstrated through sto- rytelling relate not only to the products, but also to place, the socio-cultural elements andthe people behind it A storytelling narrative around the food and winescape was created through experiential educational travel to Castello Sonnino in Montespertoli, in Tuscany Italy, that demonstrated the possibility of a multi-dimensional, transformational, and hopeful tourism. For our participating student tourists, relatable stories of food and wine production became intertwined with shared memories of consuming product, place, and culture.
The paper is well done but I have some minor remarks:
- The figure 2 is not clear
- The pictures of the landscape could be important to better understand the case study
Author Response
Reviewer 1
The paper is well done but I have some minor remarks:
- The figure 2 is not clear
A clear explanation has been added within the manuscript for this figure.
- The pictures of the landscape could be important to better understand the case study
A photograph of Castello Sonnino within the landscape of Montespertoli has been added.
Reviewer 2 Report
While this paper is very interesting, there are some issues the authors should revise:
- the authors should remove the references from the abstract.
- the authors should expand the understanding of transformative tourism in the introduction and provide more justification of the study area.
- the method section is the weakest part of the paper and must be revised. The authors should clarify the mixed-qualitative research strategy and explain the different steps. For example, they mentioned that in-depth interviews were performed but there is a lack of detail which do not allow replicability.
- I would advise to have separate sections for results and discussion which would facilitate the understanding of the paper. If not, section 4 should be retitled as results and discussion, and expanded to provide a more accurate understanding of the implications of the research.
Author Response
Reviewer 2
While this paper is very interesting, there are some issues the authors should revise:
- the authors should remove the references from the abstract.
References have been removed from the abstract.
- the authors should expand the understanding of transformative tourism in the introduction and provide more justification of the study area.
The introduction of this paper has been expanded, re-ordered, and clarified to address this comment.
- the method section is the weakest part of the paper and must be revised. The authors should clarify the mixed-qualitative research strategy and explain the different steps. For example, they mentioned that in-depth interviews were performed but there is a lack of detail which do not allow replicability.
The methods section has been greatly expanded and revised to address this comment.
- I would advise to have separate sections for results and discussion which would facilitate the understanding of the paper. If not, section 4 should be retitled as results and discussion, and expanded to provide a more accurate understanding of the implications of the research.
Section 5 has been retitled Discussion and Conclusions. Discussion of the implications of the research have been expanded in the introduction and literature review so that Section 5 facilitates the understanding of the paper
Reviewer 3 Report
I found the paper to be well-written it was not so clear in terms of the theoretical contribution or the methods used. With some reworking to enhance the engagement with theory to show how this work contributes and with more methodological rigor, and a more refined analysis this paper could be published. For this reason, I can make some specific improvement suggestions:
Firstly, as an academic article, the abstract should give a refined overview of the work to attract readers from the very beginning. An abstract of about 200 words needs to include background, purpose, methods, results, and conclusions. Therefore it could be better if the authors do some revisions and improvements to ensure simplicity and appropriateness.
Secondly, the paper needs to address more clearly the novelty of the research. In addition, in the introduction section, I recommend to insert the structure of the paper.
Thirdly, the manuscript lacks a literature review, and in this way, the scientificity of the study will be insufficient. Through collecting, reading, and commenting on related articles, we can not only know the current state of the field but also be enlightened with new perspectives.
Forth , we usually see the study area's description as a part of the study method section. So the authors need to move this part to the place it should be.
Author Response
Reviewer 3
I found the paper to be well-written it was not so clear in terms of the theoretical contribution or the methods used. With some reworking to enhance the engagement with theory to show how this work contributes and with more methodological rigor, and a more refined analysis this paper could be published. For this reason, I can make some specific improvement suggestions:
Firstly, as an academic article, the abstract should give a refined overview of the work to attract readers from the very beginning. An abstract of about 200 words needs to include background, purpose, methods, results, and conclusions. Therefore it could be better if the authors do some revisions and improvements to ensure simplicity and appropriateness.
The abstract has been re-written to address this comment.
Secondly, the paper needs to address more clearly the novelty of the research. In addition, in the introduction section, I recommend to insert the structure of the paper.
The introduction of this paper has been expanded, re-ordered, and clarified to address this comment. Additionally, the novelty of the paper has been addressed in the introduction as well as the methods section.
Thirdly, the manuscript lacks a literature review, and in this way, the scientificity of the study will be insufficient. Through collecting, reading, and commenting on related articles, we can not only know the current state of the field but also be enlightened with new perspectives.
The introduction of this paper has been expanded, re-ordered, and clarified to address this comment and expand on the literature review.
Forth , we usually see the study area's description as a part of the study method section. So the authors need to move this part to the place it should be.
This section has been moved as advised.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
While the authors have revised the paper, they should provide the profiles of the participants and expand the theoretical and practical implications of the research.
Author Response
Reviewer 2
While the authors have revised the paper, they should provide the profiles of the participants and expand the theoretical and practical implications of the research.
During the last upload, a major piece of in the manuscript was deleted during the track changes acceptance. In the uploaded version, we believe the section below and highlighted in the upload address the reviewer comments.
This exploratory, mixed methods case study [32] captures the results of a unique opportunity to integrate the lived experiences of landscape ethnography detailed through storytelling. While mixed qualitative method case studies are certainly not unique [33], the multiple perspectives detailed in this case study as provided by the instructor, who designed the experience; the students who participated in the experience, and the story-teller participants who performed the details of the experience is both rare and revealing. Tourism is a trans-disciplinary area of research [34] that requires multiple and mixed approaches to research, and studies that seek to understand both the science and the art of sustainability [35] in tourism necessitates holistic approaches to be effective. Therefore, this mixed qualitative research strategy integrates the results of ten in-depth interviews with industry experts during the field course experience, excerpts from expository travel journals simultaneously captured during the experience and focus group dialogues with 19 students at the end of the field course.
Landscapes are symbolic environments that people create to give meaning and definition to their physical environments, and ethnographic landscapes are areas of geographic space that have been given specific cultural or social meaning by people associated with them [36]. The landscape ethnographies completed by students in this field course were documented in travel journals, modeled after Taylor’s [37] assessment tool that provides an embodied picture of what students learn and how they learn it. The reflective observations compile descriptive and expository entries by all students in the course and the instructor to respond to what they have seen, done, felt or read during the field experience. These landscape ethnographies were then synergized with deliberative dialogues harvested in student focus groups at the end of the course, largely to summarize the key conceptualization of food and wine sustainability experienced during the course. Lastly, ten in-depth interviews were performed with food, wine, and hospitality industry experts who participated in the educational experiences as guest lecturers, workshop facilitators or hospitality managers and hosts. Theses interviews took a fluid conversational approach that lasted approximately 1 hour, depending on the expertise and interest of each subject. Seven topic areas were used to guide each conversation: Wine region environment, short and long-term sustainability, organic/biodynamic farming practices, the impacts of food & tourism, and the process and impact of the wine label.
In terms of synergizing the results of the multi-method research plan, the excerpts of landscape ethnographies recorded in the travel journal format were particularly revealing when held up against the educational intensions of the industry experts as revealed in the interviews. All interviews and focus groups were transcribed and coded with the outcomes from the landscape ethnographies in NVivo 12.7.0 qualitative analysis software [38]. The process of synergizing storytelling as storyscapes from all forms of participation, is iterative as the sensory experience of the course emerges as a multi-dimensional experiential dialogue that reveals the perceptual changes evident in conceptualizing sustainability, a key learning outcome of the course. Together, the industry interviews and the student cultural experiences and expectations of landscape change and sustainable food and wine tourism, provide further insight into how sustainable practices and the consumption culture of wine and food can be used and communicated for reciprocal transformational change during the tourism experience.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
