Some highlights:

• Andrew Healy from 3 Rock Marketing in Napa will reprise his excellent social media talk from last year, this time conducting it in a three-hour pre-conference workshop.
• Laura Mandala, who served as Vice President of Research for the U.S. Travel Association, will reveal the latest in wine tourism research.
• Byron Marlowe of Southern Oregon University will present findings from a survey of Oregon winery tasting rooms he is conducting specifically for this conference.
• Cindy Molchany and Thea Dwelle will present statistics on the wine blogging community and offer ideas on how you can effectively work with bloggers.
• Paul Wilke, who was manager of global public relations at Visa Inc. with a focus on the company’s travel and tourism business and founded Visa’s inaugural International Tourism Conference at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, will discuss the convergence of tourism and technology.
• Don Bourassa is the Community Manager for Yelp and will speak on how you can promote your wine tourism business digitally on sites like Yelp and Trip Advisor.

We still have a few agenda nuggets to come, including our keynote speaker announcement and eight representatives for the Perspectives on Wine Tourism section. Plus, we’ll have industry breakout groups, lunches and receptions, a pre-conference excursion, and a post-conference dinner.

We set the agenda for the Wine Tourism Conference based on feedback and suggestions from the wine tourism community. This starts with an online survey we conduct at the end of the preceding year’s conference. We then put out a call for content and speaker suggestions. We then cull these into an orderly group, combining and adjusting, before having a vote of topics by previous attendees.

All this is designed to make sure the Wine Tourism Conference reflects what you, the wine tourism industry, wants to experience each year.

According to our partners, Local Wine Events, who is hosting the database of scheduled events, there are currently 163 events scheduled and that number is still growing.

There are over 50 participating wine & tourism associations and as of today, there are over 2650 consumers who have signed up to receive updates about #WineTourismDay.

We think this is a great start!!

Organizer of Wine Tourism Day and the Wine Tourism Conference, Allan Wright recently was interviewed by Lynn Krielow Chamberlain of iWineRadio about the event and how wineries and organizations can participate. You can listen to the broadcast on WineFairy.Com.

On the Wine Tourism Day website you can search for events by region, add a Wine Tourism Day event you’d like to host and subscribe to our updates.

If you’re on Twitter, participating organizations and consumers are encouraged to tweet using #WineTourismDay

See you at a Wine Tourism Day event on May 11th!

The Wine Tourism Conference presents a unique opportunity to create a unique festival. With wine associations attending from throughout North America, we’ll be able to present a true “Great American Wine Festival” for local consumers who have probably never tried wines from wine areas such as Idaho, Ohio, Ontario, and many more of our represented regions.

The 2013 festival will be small, with a maximum of 500 attendees, including trade and media. However, our sights are set high. In fact, our model is the Great American Beer Festival, which takes place each year in Denver with 50,000 attendees. There is no similar wine festival representing all of North America and we hope to become that gathering place.

Please plan to extend your stay to take part in the festival, either as a consumer or as an exhibitor.

• Pre-conference excursion to the southern Willamette Valley
• Pre-conference workshops focused on tasting room marketing and social media
• Wednesday evening Opening Night Regional Wine Reception
• Saturday Great American Wine Festival (details coming soon)

Now, we are proud to announce we have teamed with Willamette Valley Vineyards to offer an “Oregon Destination Experience” wine pairing dinner on Friday evening. Willamette Valley Vineyards produces high-quality, sustainably grown Pinot Noir and other cool-climate varieties – earning distinction as “One of America’s Great Pinot Noir Producers” by Wine Enthusiast Magazine.  Their mission is to create elegant, classic Oregon wines from the Willamette Valley Appellation while serving as stewards of the land.

The conference officially ends at 5:00 PM and you’ll have an hour on your own before our departure at 6:00 PM. At WVV we’ll meet Founder Jim Bernau and Winemaker Don Crank for a special winemaker dinner at their Estate Vineyard and Winery.

The winery’s Executive Chef, Eric Nelson, will prepare a fresh Northwest-inspired menu that will pair beautifully with their classic Oregon Pinot Noir. The winery will have just completed construction of its barrel cellars, tasting room, kitchen and hospitality suites. Jim and Don will also personally lead you through a tour of the new facilities while experiencing a bit of barrel tasting along the way. We’ll be back to the DoubleTree hotel by 10:30 PM.

We at Zephyr Adventures, organizer of the Wine Tourism Conference, work with Willamette Valley Vineyards as part of our active Oregon wine tours. We think you’ll love them. The cost of the optional Friday evening dinner is only $25, including transportation. This excursion is only available to registered conference attendees. You can register for the excursion on the conference registration form.

When submitting a session idea, please pitch the idea with 2-3 sentences. If providing a speaker idea, please accompany it with possible session topics.

Once we receive suggestions from the wine tourism community, we will send them back out for vote. We will work to incorporate the top sessions into the greater agenda and begin to book speakers.

For the more details on the agenda for the week, click here.

Click here to register for the 2013 Wine Tourism Conference.

Email your content ideas to allan_wright at zephyradventures dot com.

The idea for a Wine Tourism Day actually comes from Europe, where the European Network of Wine Cities has organized the European Day of Wine Tourism since 2009. We at Zephyr Adventures, organizers of the Wine Tourism Conference, then proposed the concept to attendees at last year’s conference and the consensus was Wine Tourism Day is a perfect vehicle for getting wineries and wine areas to work together to promote a common goal of growing wine country visitation.

The website is launched now and we are promoting Wine Tourism Day primarily to the industry during the month of February. To get involved, all you have to do is create an event on May 11th and sign up to have it listed on the website. Starting March 1st, we, along with our partners (LocalWineEvents.com, Touring and Tasting Marketing & Media, Wine Industry Network, and WineAmerica), will promote this to the public. We are even offering a Great Wine Tour Giveaway promotion to get the public excited about wine tourism.

As a winery or other wine-related business hosting an event, you benefit via the free publicity of being involved with Wine Tourism Day and can use this to generate publicity on your own as well. Just sign up today on the Wine Tourism Day website to join us.

The Pre-Conference Excursion will begin on Wednesday, November 12th in Eugene, Oregon and conclude on Thursday, November 13th. The excursion supplement is $50 per person, and includes local transportation to and from winery visits for both days, and lunch and dinner on 11/12. Not included in the cost of the excursion is transportation to Eugene, lodging at the Vally River Inn, and the train ticket from Eugene to Portland on 11/13.

Full excursion logistics and details can be found on our EVENTS page.

On Tuesday, participants will begin the excursion with a small plates lunch and tasting provided by the Eugene, Cascades & Coast Adventure Center followed by visits to Sarver Winery (tentative) and Sweet Cheeks Winery . Tuesday’s finale will be at King Estate Winery.

If you’re familiar with King Estate, you likely know that any experience with them is one to remember. At the 2012 Wine Bloggers’ Conference, King Estate wowed over 350 bloggers with an exquisite five course meal of perfectly paired food and wine combinations. The winery itself sits atop a 1,033 acre certified organic property  featuring a 475 acre vineyard and 30 acres of fruit and vegetable gardens that all supply produce for their critically acclaimed estate restaurant. Guests of the excursion will be treated to a behind-the-scenes tour of the estate, wine tasting, and a wine-paired dinner in the estate restaurant. You will no doubt walk away impressed by King Estate and the other wineries of the region, but will also leave inspired by what they are doing to grow wine tourism in the Southern Willamette Valley.

On Wednesday, participants who register for our pre-conference workshops in Portland will depart Eugene via Amtrak to Portland early that morning. The rest of the participants will spend a casual day visiting the the urban winery scene of Eugene as well as the new Brewery District. We will be departing on the 2:36 Amtrak for portland and will enjoy a final excursion tasting aboard the “Coast Starlight” en route to Portland.

Again, check out our Events page for full Pre-Conference Excursion details and other WTC event opportunities.

Conference registration is open for the 2013 Wine Tourism Conference and Pre-Conference Excursion.

Wow!

That sounds pretty forward thinking and something from which those of us who live in the United States can potentially learn. Consider this:

• Tourism Australia is the country’s marketing arm, promoting itself as a tourist destination.
• Wine Australia is the country’s government agency, designed in part to “build the reputation of Australian wine.”
• Tourism Australia and Wine Australia are now getting together to create a three-year campaign to promote Australia as a wine tourism destination.

So we here in the US are a little behind. We just created our first tourism promotion agency, Brand USA. If you didn’t attend the 2012 Wine Tourism Conference, you missed Brand USA’s Amir Eylon give a keynote speech about this very subject. While we have WineAmerica, which works to promote a better regulatory environment, we have no organization building the market for American wine as a whole.

And we certainly have no one thinking about promoting the US as a wine tourism destination.

Granted, individual states do promote themselves abroad. California does an excellent job promoting its wine as a tourism draw and Virginia is starting to do the same. These parts help the whole, of course.

It is also true that in general as Americans, and specifically during this period in our history, relying on the government to fund some sort of wine tourism campaign is not likely to fly.

But the question remains whether the US would benefit from having some sort of private cooperation promoting the country as a great wine producer or, more specifically to this site, as a wine tourism destination.

What do you think?

Chris Cutler from Swanson Vineyards in St. Helena, California, was pleased with the content. “This was my first WTC, so did not know what to expect. I felt like the presentations were very thoughtful, informative, and meant to add real value to my experience,” said Cutler.

Photo Credit: www.michaelwrightstudio.com

Both first time attendees and conference veterans agreed that collaborations and partnerships continue to be the lifeblood of successful wine tourism campaigns. And it is critical that all stakeholders’ work together to promote events and keep each other informed throughout the year.

Photo Credit: www.michaelwrightstudio.com

The primary challenges cited were not having the budget or support from the leaders in local and state governments to make wine tourism a priority and the need to educate local city councils on the revenue created by in market dollars spent on wine tourism.

A leading trend in many markets was the combination of wine and activity. From cooking classes to kayaking, developing programs that reach customers through their interests and passions is one of the most effective ways to create an experience that connects people to a brand or region and converts visitors into consumers after a trip.

Photo Credit: www.michaelwrightstudio.com

Social media continues to be an important part of the marketing mix for wine tourism and many attendees noted their biggest challenges were managing the growth of social media and the need to have guidelines in place to handle both negative and positive feedback on user generated on comment sites such as Trip Advisor and Yelp.

Looking towards the future, the consensus was that the future for wine tourism looks bright, and that mobile applications and third party reviews will be the key drivers as more wine tourists depend on their hand–held devices for food, wine, and lodging recommendations.

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Author: Marcy Gordon

Photo Credit: Michael Wright Studio

The session was attended by over 50 people, mostly associated with the direct to consumer sales and marketing efforts of a independent winery. The room was divided into 7 different categories allowing people to sit with a group that was interested in the same category.

The groups introduced each other and began sharing ideas around their category. Michaela and Taylor then instructed the groups to each come up with a list of highlights from their discussion to share with the session. The following list are the 7 categories and notes taken from the session.

Eat, Sleep, Shop – Partnering with Restaurants, Hotels & Retail

• Empower your sales staff to build their own relationships with other business representatives and give them the leverage to make decisions that will drive traffic as a result
• Work on person to person relationships
• Incentivize your sales staff that build those types of relationships
• Participate in progressive events – multiple venues
• Call & thank businesses who send traffic to you (concierges too)
• Partner with retail shops and pour your wine there
• Be authentic & positive in your relationship building with people
• Service is the foundation / Customer is #1. Remember what they have potentially gone through to visit you. Don’t close shop early or make late guests feel unwelcome.
• Offer to train restaurant staff on your wines
• Staff retention: long standing employees says volumes about your winery and the kind of business you run

Deal Making – Using Flash Sites (Groupon, Living Social, Gilt, Bloomspot, etc)

• Think about who you want as a customer, and then structure any Groupon offer around that
• Groupon could involve a community/business collaboration
• Make sure you are collecting data in your tasting room on where your visitors are coming from so that you know what services you should use in the future

Be Seen – Building Can’t Miss Events that Drive Traffic

• Drive new traffic, increase PR, and grow your contacts by partnering w/ non-profits or charities. It also helps with licensing issues.
• Events are a great way to get people to commit. Create early bird pricing specials and up-sell (sell a table for an event rather than a reservation)
• Build events around the interests of your membership (i.e. fly fishing) and bring vendors that apply to those interests. It ads value.
• Follow trends (i.e. food trucks, mud runs, etc) and incorporate into your event strategy.
• Don’t use Groupon for your winery events
• People are tired of basic food & wine pairing events. Sometimes only subtle changes to food and wine pairing events are needed for big impact.

Traditional Channels – Working With Your Local Tourism Board

• It’s about Relationships: return the phone call and email
• Agree to pour at their events
• Ask them what they need from you
• Partner with tourism boards and piggy back off their larger events
• Reward & educate their volunteers and staff
• Cross pollinate with other regional tourism offices
• Be active with tourism boards – it will help increase your exposure
• Remember they have budgets and press contacts (free PR)
• Working with Tourism Boards could have global reach for your brand – think big picture.

Neighbors – Developing a Referral Program Among Wineries

• Find similar winery partners (size, price point, etc)
• Cross train each other’s staff
• “GEMS” = successful referral program
• Promotional offers – share your wine club benefits with your neighbor winery’s members and vise-versa

The Network – Using Social Media

• Make Wifi available in your tasting room – it promotes engagement!
• Goal with Social Media is to drive DTC traffic
• Social Media is not necessarily about giving something away – it’s about sharing what you offer
• Track the data and analyze – it’s important to know what channels people are coming from.
• A successful campaign is “Wine Club Member of the Day” on Facebook. It draws people in and engages them
• Check the online reviews and respond.

Local Tourism – Getting Locals Engaged

• Rule of 10 – When you leave your winery – where can you go that is within a 10 minute drive? Those are the businesses where your recommendations are coming from.
• Participate and visit happy hours within this radius.
• Hold a local’s night and extend hours and specials in your tasting room

There is now a facebook group for registered attendees of the conference. If you attended the conference, you can ask to join at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/134816410002071/ This list will be posted as a document within that group.