Online Only Poster Session
Considering a Hospitality and Tourism Beverage Program’s Wine Storage and Display Conditions View Digital Media
Poster Session Paulette R. Hebert
With the global growth of wine tourism and consumption, many universities now offer beverage education programs with facilities replicating real-world conditions to train students. Since wine is sensitive to temperature, proper storage is crucial. According to Wine Guardian (2023), white wine should be stored at a consistent temperature of 55-57°F. Recently, a university's beverage education center experienced air conditioning failure in its see-through cooler display, necessitating HVAC replacement and temporary removal of expensive wine bottles. Researchers from a neighboring environmental design program sought to document the cooler's interior temperature conditions before and after the HVAC system replacement to compare pre- and post-replacement data. This study focuses on pre-replacement data. The wine cooler, a transparent, fully furnished space (154 sq.ft) designed to resemble a luxury restaurant with tasting tables, seating, and large wine display walls, holds 1296 maximum bottles of white and red wines. Data was collected using two instruments: 1) 1500°F Dual Laser Non-Contact Infrared Thermometer and 2) FLIR 85 Thermal Imaging Camera. A team of three faculty members and two doctoral students conducted an in-situ study, documenting the interior temperature, which ranged from 57.90°F to 65.30°F, while outdoor temperature was 81°F. The interior temperatures fell outside the recommended range for optimal wine storage, which could result in subpar wine taste. Educational programs focused on best practices in wine storage, display, and service should strive to maintain ideal temperature conditions. The study results, including pictorial documentation of the wine cooler, architectural plans, temperature graphs, and thermal imaging, are presented.
Emotions Don’t Lie: Using Neuroscience to Decode Tourist Behavior: Unveiling unconscious drivers of value, trust, and engagement in tourism experiences.
Poster Session Marco Baldocchi, Carolin Lusby
In the tourism and leisure industries, understanding what travelers truly feel is more critical than ever. Traditional research tools—surveys, interviews, focus groups—rely on conscious, rational responses. However, neuroscience has shown that most human decisions, including travel-related ones, are driven by unconscious processes. This poster introduces a practical framework that leverages consumer neuroscience tools—Implicit Association Tests (IAT), Facial Coding, and Eye-Tracking—to access the automatic emotional responses that shape how people perceive destinations, experiences, and brands. These methods go beyond self-reporting, allowing tourism professionals to capture implicit perceptions of trust, value, and engagement. We present real-world case studies from food tourism, hospitality, and cultural heritage sectors in Europe and the United States. Each case demonstrates how neuromarketing tools reveal hidden reactions to visual environments, sensory cues, and brand narratives—often uncovering insights that contradict what consumers claim in traditional surveys. This approach empowers professionals to optimize the design of experiences, marketing messages, and visitor journeys based on how the brain actually responds—not how we think it should respond. Whether you’re curating an exhibition, branding a destination, or designing a booking interface, understanding the unconscious is no longer optional—it’s strategic. This poster invites researchers, marketers, and tourism operators to embrace a new layer of insight: emotional truth grounded in neuroscience.
