Wine tourism // Develop an attractive and profitable offer that will win the loyalty of your consumers !

One of the tourism activities revolves around vines and grapes. Today #oenotourism is a real tourism sector with its codes, its customers and a dynamic of growth. The market is still developing rapidly and, depending on your region, initiatives are developing to enhance the natural, human, technical and cultural factors of a wine-growing area. You yourself, winegrower, producer, farmer, merchant, supplier to the sector, hotelier, restaurateur or leisure structure, you can ask yourself this question : Do I have an interest in it and why ?

Topics that I suggest you address :

• Definition and activities
• Why get started ?
• How to get started ?
• Possible strategies
• Prepare your project

Definition and activities

Wine tourism is the discovery of a wine region, the wines and terroirs that compose it and the people who shape them. 

The goal is to bring visitors to your estate and give them a unique and different #experience, while sharing your knowledge, values and know-how with them. 

While everyone’s working techniques may seem similar in the vineyards, for example, each winegrower has a different approach to producing their own cuvées. Each wine tourism product will therefore be unique! It’s up to you to differentiate them.

Wine tourism can take the form of many activities, ideally participatory, such as :

• initiation into wine tasting through sensory analysis;
• the discovery of the work of the winegrower through visits to the vineyard or cellar;
• participation in work in the vineyard (pruning, tying, etc.) or in the harvest;
• recognition of terroirs and grape varieties;
• visiting places related to the world of wine (Museum, brotherhood, wine city, etc.);
• visits to companies directly related to the world of wine (coopers, glassworks, cork and label factories, etc.);
• fun and sporting activities, such as tours on wine trails on foot, by electric bicycle, gyropod, horse-drawn carriage, hot-air balloon flight, etc…;
• gastronomy via food and wine pairings;
• well-being, with wine therapy

Families are also consumers of wine tourism products and will appreciate the educational tools put in place for the youngest. It is possible to taste grape juice to “be like the grown-ups”, to recognize smells in the idea of the “nose of wine”, to explain the work of the winegrower by showing the different phases of the vine cycle. photos etc…

Finally, to extend stays, many estates offer on-site accommodation to sleep at the property or join forces with neighboring accommodation owners (Logis, Inns, Relais, Hotels, Campsites, etc.) to suggest an offer of full stay.

Why get started ?

Wine tourism can be a mine of opportunities for a producer who wants to develop his business. This allows, among other things, to :

• diversify its activity;
• promote wine-growing know-how;
• increase the notoriety of the estate;
• attract new customers;
• meet its customers live and create a lasting relationship with them;
• generate additional income;
• increase sales;
• maintain a heritage

On the tourism side, the interest of customers is increasingly important. Tourist stays tend to be shorter in duration but to be more numerous, several weekends or holidays are scheduled during the same year. What “wine tourists” have in common: visitors are systematically looking for specific themes and experiences to live. A third of holidaymakers cite wine and gastronomy as their reasons for choosing a stay. Today, local stays, experiences, the search for authenticity are all assets to think seriously, if you are in a wine region to turn to this market.  

According to “Atout France”, when they numbered 7.5 million in 2009, tourists who came to discover French wines and vineyards were now more than 10 million in 2016, representing an overall expenditure of 5.2 billion euros. The French clientele remains in the majority and foreigners still represent 42% of attendance at the national level, the Belgians and the British in the lead.

What could be more beautiful than to make discover his profession, or the gestures executed for centuries, to curious people from all over the world?

Regarding distribution, wine tourism allows the estate to promote its direct sales. By selling directly, you do not lose the margin that you could have given to the intermediaries of the distribution channels. The link between producer and consumer is therefore direct and lasting. The minimum turnover target for wine tourism should therefore be between 10 and 15% of total turnover per entity. It includes direct sales, revenue from visits and other activities, goodies … But we must also imagine that consumer loyalty through wine tourism will ultimately lead to an overall increase in sales, since the estate will have won in notoriety.

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How to get started ?

To do this, it is necessary to be able to offer quality services, an irreproachable welcome as well as a development of the reception area in the well-thought-out estate.
A good relationship with the customer starts from the first impression, it is important that they feel privileged thanks to a personalized service!
The little extra! Get support at the start of your project to put together the file and think carefully about the offer that must be different from your competitors. Professionals have specialized in the field, the wine tourism cluster of Atout France is one of the key players and your Tourist Office or Departmental Tourism Committee, Regional Tourism Committee as well as your CCI can assist you.

1. Create a wine tourism offer

Before you jump headlong into the organization of your wine tourism activities, it is important to think carefully about what you want to offer visitors. Cellar visits, vineyard visits, tastings not to mention them all? These are all activities that must be targeted and organized in such a way that tourists passing through the region come to see YOUR vineyards, YOUR estate. The activities range from the most classic “visit of the vineyard then tasting” to the most innovative such as an “escape game in the cellars or a ride in a vintage car in the vineyard”, for example. The objective must remain to introduce the profession of winegrower … to as many people as possible !

But above all, your domain must be able to present a unique and different experience that will amaze visitors and make them want to talk about it! The informed consumer seeks an experience but above all an original, an unique experience. It is therefore crucial to rethink your “vineyard – cellar – tasting” journey from a different point of view.

Many winegrowers use this offbeat card as the organization of visits to different vintages with a vintage vehicle. Others develop an original axis of the discovery of fauna and flora and a better understanding of the profession of winegrower through a pedestrian route through the vineyard. Another big trend: the gastronomic stopover and the guest room linked to the wine industry.

2. Communicate about your wine tourism offer

Finally, you will need to publicize your new products by developing an effective promotional and communication action plan. The opportunities offered by digital are numerous and should be incorporated into your sales strategy. Remember to plan a budget, it will quickly pay off in the development of your activities. After having developed a complete offer to make discovering your vineyard in the most beautiful way to passing tourists, it is very important to communicate to make this wine tourism offer known. There are different communication channels through which you will let visitors know that your domain is open for visits :

• your website is the ambassador of your offer. Indeed, some customers favor the website for their purchases. It is therefore important to develop this means of communication to attract your customers to the other products you offer ;
• the media also play a central role in your communication strategy. Social networks are an essential way to promote your company or its products. The local press (newspapers, radio, television) is an essential relay to use through editorial advertising to talk about your activities without dedicating large advertising budgets.
• word of mouth is the winemaker’s best friend. It is to know that word of mouth is the first source of information for the decision to buy, and even more so when we speak of wine. So this solution, surely the least expensive, is undoubtedly an essential step in your communication campaign.

3. Let visitors taste your products

Thanks to the creation of your wine tourism offer and the associated communication, your sales volume will increase. It is important to keep in mind that an enotourist spends an average of € 250 on the consumption and purchase of wine at the estate (according to Atout France), that is to say that these are all potential revenues for your business. To achieve this, do not hesitate to have your products tasted during a tasting, to simply talk about your wines, spirits or other products derived from your manufacture. Customers can thus easily project themselves into tasting situations. Although some customers will buy your products even though they have not tasted them during their visit, having them tasted is a seller and will allow you to increase your direct sales.

4. Practice promotional offers

In the same vein as a tasting, promotional offers attract regular customers as well as non-consumers. There are different promotional operations that will make you increase sales volumes :

• contests: relay your contest on social networks to win a bottle of wine or a visit to the vineyard for the winner. This technique is beneficial in two ways: getting people to talk about you as a seller of wine or by-products and as a wine tourism destination.
• sale with a gift: offer an accessory or a product. You will be able to use this offer according to different modalities (one product offered for 3 products purchased, one product offered on the 10th purchase). This program helps to build customer loyalty as well as to discover new products that they will be likely to consume.
• Price reductions: Advertise coupons in a local newspaper and offer 20% or 30% on selected products. You can also launch a special offer (on the model of the Wine Fair) which reduces the prices of products for a specified period.

Once up and running, listen to the feedback from your activity-consuming customers to adapt your offer by taking their opinions into account. 

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Possible strategies

To deploy its “physical environment”, the estate can develop partnerships with local business providers such as hotels, restaurants, tourist offices, etc. These business introducers allow free recommendation of the domain because they provide a service to their customers by becoming “stay advisers“. They offer experiences to their customers and communicate on the richness of the destination in terms of leisure, culture and discovery. This connection allows the producer not to pay the additional costs of a more traditional intermediary.

The sales aspect will also be considered. To develop your business, it is interesting to present, invite and make offers to intermediaries such as specialized agencies, tour operators or online agencies who will be important prescribers of your offer. Study the possibilities, costs and potential returns expected knowing that it is recommended to have a maximum of 30% of its activity which depends on intermediaries. Through the ideas presented above, you will already have a lot of tools to develop your live visits before digging into this component which can come in a second phase of growth.

Also, it may be wise to offer the possibility of living this experience on all possible means of communication between the producer and the consumer. Starting with the label, which is the first communication interface: a typical mention “wine tourism experience” on the back label is still so little used. However, it makes it possible to refer consumers easily to the producer’s website, which should be a real showcase for its products, but also for its wine tourism offer! Our foreign competitors have already used this idea which brought a lot of satisfaction and visibility.

At a time when the population is increasingly using online reservations rather than taking their phones, it is also becoming essential to offer a booking interface for visits on your website. Digital therefore represents a powerful vehicle for notoriety for wineries in order to develop their wine tourism, but still underexploited to this day.

Prepare your project

Wine tourism can be considered the ultimate experience of the French art of living. Attracting wine lovers to wineries allows industry players to get closer to the consumer, create a lasting relationship, and increase direct sales from the producer. This is why wine tourism is becoming an essential development in the wine industry, and all the more so with recent economic tensions in America or Asia.

As with hotels and restaurants, wine tourism is a profession that cannot be improvised. Get support to build your project and review all the stages including some administrative authorizations that can sometimes weaken the initial idea.

Steps to build :

1. Study of the site environment, SWOT analysis (Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats);
2. Construction of the offer and the level of quality;
3. Study of the offer of competitors, of the target customer mix;
4. Construction of the circuit, experience and necessary equipment;
5. Financial study (Investments and income) and target profitability.

The entity must be able to set profitability targets, measure visitor loyalty and develop its offering every two years on different themes. This is why it is essential that the project leader takes charge of the management, the organization of the teams, the relevance of the development tools, the training of the management of visitors … by integrating this activity into production and the marketing of wine. There are many areas that still separate the “wine tourism hub” from others, so much so that no one understands each other’s trades. It is not enough to recruit one or two guides to develop a sustainable and profitable wine tourism activity: those who invest in the strategy and provide tools to their teams are now reaping the rewards.

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Wine tourism, finally a good idea for development !

It is a real cultural revolution that is taking place: moving from wine production to the art of entertaining and telling stories about wine is by no means obvious and operators are doing it more and more. Diversifying your activity is becoming an essential lever for development, especially in this post-Covid19 period.

While historic town centers and seashores are, in France, close to saturation, wine tourism could help revitalize certain areas far from metropolitan areas and in search of new activities. By offering these wine tourists, for example, special moments in connection with the winegrowers. Today, tourists can take part in the grape harvest for a few hours, cycle through the vineyards on horseback, or even fly over them at low altitude. They have the opportunity to make a personalized bottle label as a souvenir of their visit. They learn to speak wine with professional vocabulary. Artistic exhibitions, concerts, shows are organized in the vineyards ….. the ideas are numerous.

Visitors’ expectations have never been so important in a search for authenticity, a thirst to understand, to live an experience, to come back to these earthly trades.

The key success factors to integrate :

#WINETOURISM #SPIRITOURISM #AGRITOURISM

• Build a strategy ;
• Imagine unique, different experiences ;
• Work the welcome again and again ;
• Make the link in its physical and digital communication tools ;
• And above all… invest! in its estate and management, human resources.

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