Sustainability: A Global Competitive Advantage for a Winery
Sustainability in the wine industry is a key factor of competitiveness, innovation, territorial growth, environmental consciousness, responsible consumption, and recognition, which increases the intention to buy sustainable products, as several authors have noted in the recent literature (Nave et al, 2021).
Communicating sustainability to potential visitors may also make wineries aware of the existence of sustainable travel and wine products and the specifications of the offerings.
related to sustainability criteria, among other objectives (Tölkes, 2018). This communication challenge is especially important for landmark wineries that have been practising several sustainable processes since ages. However, most of them have not been putting enough effort into communicating their practices as a strength for their wine tourism and business and are in need to reinvigorate their brands with the future generations. Wineries’ abilities to communicate their adoption and innovation of sustainable policies remains critical to consumer perceptions of positive change (Garcia-Cortijo et al., 2021), both on the scale of individual brand identities and the character of an entire wine tourism region. It is crucial to comprehend changes and advances in technologies, such as the adoption of social media (Valeri and Baggio, 2020). From the communication point of view, social media is the current way to communicate with the consumers of all ages and the place for wineries to engage people wherever they are. It offers a unique opportunity to establish trust, but it can also be a place where business social media into the business can be a big challenge (Obermayer et al., 2022). Following Singh and Srivastava (2019), social media tends to inspire travel more than any other form of interaction in the previous stages.
This chapter focuses on understanding sustainability communication practices in a landmark winery in Spain, Bodegas Emilio Moro, the Spanish winery with largest Instagram followers (2021) whose wines have been also selected among the top 100 best wines by one worldwide reputed magazine. The winery is Ribera del Duero Designation of Origin, one of the most important and recognised wine growing regions, whose weather conditions and privileged location result in one of the highest quality wines in Spain and one of the most important wine tourism regions.
This research follows the WTO sustainability indicators and guidelines used in other studies (Tiago et al., 2021; Duarte Alonso et al., 2021) focused on economic viability, employment viability, visitor fulfilment, community wellbeing, cultural richness and resource efficiency. In-depth interviews with the marketing, communication and sustainability managers of Bodegas Emilio Moro will be carried out towards a deeper understanding of the strategies, actions, and communication tools of the winery.