Overview of Sirromet Winery

Discuss about the Quality of Life in Tourism Employees.

This report will give an overview of tourist behavior, current management practices, issues and recommendations from our site visit to a well established and successful Winery “Sirromet” in accordance with the academic knowledge gained from the subject “Tourist Management Strategies” (Byrd et al., 2016)

Sirromet is situated amount cotton, Queensland just a short drive from Brisbane City and the Gold Coast. Nestled around the Laguna paperbark trees and giant Scribble gums, it was opened in the year 2000 which is widespread over 250 hectares. Sacrament’s state-of-the-art facilities include the fully operating Winery, Cellar Door, Restaurant Lurleen’s and Tuscan Terrace, set against breathtaking natural scenery overlooking Moreton Bay (Timothy, D. J., & Boyd, S. W. (2014).

Sirromet Winery is home to 97 computerized insulated Stainless-steel wine tanks ranging from 3000 Litres to 80,000 Litres in size, have a total holding capacity of 2.2 million Litres. The Vintage machinery which includes a grape hopper and crusher capable of processing 20 Tonnes of grapes at once. (Sirromet/ The Winery)

Wine yard is spread across 100 hectares of Queensland’s granite belt region approximately 600-1500 meters above sea level. Due to its elevation this plateau experience some of Australia’s coldest winter and enrich soil allows grapes to grow to its highest quality which produces unique and rich flavors (Page, 2014).

Sirromet winery offers fine dining in its award-winning Restaurant Lurleen’s to cafe style dining in Tuscan inspired terrace / Cellar Door. It serves modern Australian cuisine featuring fresh Queensland produce, local seafood, organically grown fruits and vegetables, herbs, and spices.

It offers a 90 minutes tour which includes winemaking visit and vine tasting section which gives an overall idea of wine producing and different types of wines (Pereira & Mykletun, 2017).

The winery does not have proper operations to manage the fluctuating crowd. It is built in such a way which can’t hold the carrying capacity of tourists. The place is built to manage few people at once which results in confusion among tourists.

There is no separate pathway for the queue to enter inside the vinery, as employees and tourist share same pathway resulting in congestion and conflicts. There was no accessibility for disabled people especially people who need wheelchair assistance (Hansen & Mossberg, 2017).

The absence of front desk/Information center resulted in panic among tourist.The lack of seating and shades caused inconvenience among the tourist and drinking water was one of the key issues the destination was facing as a tourist who needs water had to walk all the way back to restaurant area which was difficult especially for elderly people (Moutinho & Vargas-Sanchez, 2018).

Winery Facilities and Tourist Activities

Fire evacuation signs were missing in many key areas of the winery and no information was given regarding the evacuation plan in case of emergency or fire (Smith, 2015).

Current Management Practices at the site According to internal and external Information on the internet, it is totally different as there are no signage routes for car parking and handicap parking slot leading to difficulty for old and disabled. People were facing problem going down to the winery factory Although there is much parking space but not allocated properly (Kim & Yang, 2016).

There was no separate bathroom for tourist. People were sharing toilets with a bathroom made for staff.

The holistic impression of the site was not much as expected. Though the tour was affordable among tourist there was no senior or student discount as stated on the website. The guidebook is functional minimalist as told by guided tour.

Conservative Marketing Techniques were advertised all over the winery for wine tasting.

Advertised as a tourist destination but it’s more of explanation of a technical aspect of winemaking which is a mindless experience for most of the tourist

There is also lack of coordination and communication among staff as they did not know the proper way to exit when there is a lot of crowds gather at a time.

Use of visual media sensory such as Television can be used to improve the experience of the tourist as the winery doesn’t operate during all the season which will help the tourist to see how the wine is been made.

The security standard of the area is a cop up with a lot of camera in each and every corner of the winery factory though there should be proper guards if someone misbehaves with another tourist because almost tourist is the influence of alcohol and they can be dangerous for the staff and among tourist.For an emergency situation, there is stop button in every corner of the machine but it was not told by the tour guide (Dadwal & Hassan, 2015).

Firsthand experience of tourist was good to know about the winemaking is made, but it was lacking when comes to reality where only the information about the machinery was given by the staff instead of showing how the winery works.

One of the major improvements that need is setting the fire signals properly. As it is already mentioned that there is the problem of overcrowding and people often face a huge problem because of this. Crowd managing facilities are not properly available. There must be a proper arrangement made for the physically challenged people. Sanitation is one of the major concerns. The tourists must get the facility of using separate bathrooms which will be clean and tidy. The tourist agency must be using the televisions for enhancing the tourist experience. This will help in increasing the tourist attraction as they will be able to see the winemaking and the other activities even during the lean seasons when the tourism is not that active. They must implement and strengthen the security. Though the winery has cameras located at every corner and also remote control systems where there are buttons for the tourists to use whenever they sense some problems. The issue was that the tourist guide did not give all these instructions clearly. There must be proper awareness made among the tourists regarding each and every detail. However, this has to be properly done by the tourist guides. They must be able to utilize those provisions that have been made for the tourists.

Current Management Practices and Issues

After the visit, we came across many issues among which one the prominent issues which came into notice was crowd management. Regulating the number of people for the tour at a time.

Booking should be made available online as many tourists were going back because of lack of tourist at a time which was not economical for the destination owners and during the peak time people were not given tickets because of over inflow of tourist. Front desk/ Information should be placed for the ease of tourist (Pratt & Tarlow, 2014).

The winery tour is totally fatigue’ ’whereas people were physically tired as there was too much information but nothing exciting was there to attract the tourist.There should be proper involvement of the tourist should staff which was lacking in the destination

The winery tour was missing many key components as shown in the description online such as vineyard visit, which should not be ignored, and Sustainable practices should be shown to the tourist while on tour.

The learning material should be there for tourist because its once in a lifetime visit these type of winery tours. Tourists can’t go there often unless they live nearby instead of conducting the tour with just a motive to sell the wine.

They should provide affordable transportation to the nearest public transport because a lot of tourists prefer public transport. The structure of the site can be maintained and renovated to current carrying capacity if little efforts can be taken.

Tour Guide should tell the sustainable practice like using of installing a new $700,000 waste treatment facility, Plastic, and glass waste are also recycled off-site although the commitment to make wine of the highest quality without compromising sustainable values.

The winery is using a variety of chemicals and it is stored near the pathways were tourist was walking. Hard approaches like wall or steel cages should be put along the pathway instead of using soft approaches like just warning which is not enough as people from different countries won’t understand the English language.

Many of the places like a golf course, wine yard should be included in the tour which is expected by most of the tour when they hear the named winery visit

Conclusion

The Study of Tourist Management Strategies” helped us to gain the knowledge of analyzing a destination which was put into the practical application during our visit to Sirromet Winery. We were able to identify the destination from an auditor’s point of view rather than a common tourist view. It also helped us to identify current issues of the destination, current management practices followed and our recommendations for enchantment and sustainability of the destination.

References

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