Measuring success of a wine festival: is it really that simple?

One of the country’s largest wine festivals, the Wacky Wine Festival, is held annually in Robertson, South Africa. Forty-eight wine farms participate actively in the Robertson Valley that forms part of the wine route and festival, which makes this wine festival unique. This paper presents the results of a survey that was conducted during the festival in June 2009, where visitors completed 424 questionnaires. The questionnaire consisted of three sections, namely (A) socio-emographic information, (B) travel behaviour and (C) statements pertaining to the management aspects of the event. The aim was to conduct a management appraisal based on the premise that different markets have different requirements. To achieve this aim, a factor analysis and an ANOVA were used to determine the significance of each visitor group (market) in relation to the key success factors of the event. Crosstabulation identified the visitors’ factor scores for each key success factor, where the Anderson-Rubin method was used to generate a score with a zero mean. A contrast test was used where the significance did not assume equal variances. The findings indicated that different visitor groups or markets had different perceptions of the key success factors contributing to the success of the wine festival. The implication is that a general evaluation by visitors gives a distorted view of the success of the event, since different markets have different requirements. Key words:  Wacky Wine Festival; Management; Key success factors;Factor analysis; Wine tourism