Sustainable Rural Tourism Transition In The Wine Industry: The Role Of Meso Level

The pandemic has changed tourist needs and domestic rural tourism has boomed. People look for countryside destinations to avoid virus transmission and to satisfy the environmental, escapist, educational, and entertainment needs at the same time. Sustainable Rural Tourism has an impact on the local communities and on the enhancement of traditional culture and environment and these new habits impact all the sustainability dimensions. In this context, wineries give an important contribution to sustainable rural tourism and in the last years, they have acquired importance worldwide. Data from the most used app for tourism bookings has shown off that winery visits and wine tastings are the favourite touristic activities for consumers in Italy (TripAdvisor, 2022). Moreover, sustainability has become a fundamental asset for all business activities and wineries have started to implement sustainable strategies both in the production and in the creation of local networks to generate value for all the actors of their territory. Since the implementation of sustainable practices involves different actors and it shaped the co-creation activity, the service ecosystem perspective is needed to manage the overlapping of social, economic and environmental goals. Since small and medium wineries are facing the sustainable rural tourism transition, the network relationships between actors at different levels of the ecosystems are becoming crucial. The research aims to analyze the impact of actors at meso level in this transition of Italian wineries.