From the Organizers Archives - Page 35 of 38 - Wine Marketing & Tourism Conference

Eight Key Speakers Announced for Wine Tourism Conference

July 20, 2012 by Allan

We are very proud to announce eight prominent speakers for the 2012 Wine Tourism Conference. Please see our Speakers page for bios on each person.

Chris Perkins from Brand USA will kick off the conference on November 14 as our opening keynote speaker [edit – please note due to a scheduling confliect we have replaced Chris with Amir Eylon, VP of Partner Development with Brand USA] and Jean-Charles Boisset from Boisset Family Estates will close the conference the following day. In addition, we have confirmed speakers on our two key panels, the Wine Leaders Panel and Tourism Leaders Panel.

Chris Perkins is the Chief Marketing Officer for Brand USA, which was established by the Travel Promotion Act in 2010 to spearhead the nation’s first global marketing effort to promote the United States as a premier travel destination. Since this is the United States’ first unified effort at promoting itself as a tourism destination, it seemed highly appropriate to bring Chris to our conference of wine tourism leaders.

Jean-Charles Boisset is the proprietor of Boisset Family Estates, one of the world’s preeminent family-owned wine companies, with leading positions in the wines of Burgundy, Beaujolais, the Rhône Valley, the South of France, French sparkling wines, and the United States. In March 2008 he received the Meininger International Wine Entrepreneur of the Year Award and in December 2008 he was named “Innovator of the Year” by the Wine Enthusiast magazine. He is known as an excellent speaker at conferences.

We are equally excited with our panelists. Because this conference crosses the wine and tourism industries, we wanted to make sure we heard from key leaders on both sides of the board. Our Panel of Wine Leaders will include these influential people:

Steve Warner, President and CEO of the Washington State Wine Commission
Annette Boyd, Director of the Virginia Wine Board Marketing Office
David Bowman, Vice President of Marketing for FIJI Water, JUSTIN Winery, and Landmark Vineyards

Our Panel of Tourism Industry Leaders will include:

Todd Davidson, Executive Director of the Oregon Tourism Commission
Traci Ward, Director of Marketing at Visit California
Morgen McLaughlin, President and CEO of Finger Lakes Wine Country

We truly feel as if any of these eight could easily be keynote speakers. We hope you appreciate the lineup and we will be announcing speakers for our breakout sessions in the coming weeks.

WTC Breakout Sessions Selected

June 11, 2012 by Allan

We received many, many suggestions for content and speakers for the 2012 Wine Tourism Conference and have been sifting through them. We will be announcing each section’s content and speakers as they are set.

To start, we are happy to present the six breakout sessions to be presented at the coming conference. We had several dozen suggestions and eventually asked our advisory board to vote on the top 18 suggestions to pick the winning six. Three will be presented each hour and you’ll need to select which to attend:

First Hour

Wine Tourism PR: Getting a writer from the New York Times to stay at your hotel, visit your winery, or take your tour is a coup. But not every business will be in the Times. How do you go about getting PR for your wine tourism business, both in the traditional press and online?
Social Media in Wine and Travel: Everyone is now using social media. How much time and money should you allocate to this? Should you focus on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube or is Pinterest or some new site the next great thing? Here from experts and those who have created successful campaigns.
Working with Concierges: Where do tourists stay when they visit your area? In hotels. And whom do they ask for suggestions on what to do and where to eat? The hotel’s concierge. Hear from a panel of professional concierges about how you can develop closer relationships with these tourism professionals.

Second Hour

How to Create a Successful Wine Tourism Destination: Napa and Sonoma are no longer the only places people think of when they consider a wine tourism visit in North America. Hear from a panel of people who are in the trenches, turning what were once unknown areas into wine tourism destinations.
Opening Your Region to the International Tourism Market: How many of your visitors come from outside your area? Did you know Germany and Britain produce the most foreign travelers, with China and Japan on the rise? Learn how to open your region to international tourism.
Wine Tourism Around the World: In Italy, most wineries are not open to the public on a drop-in basis. In Argentina and Spain, some wineries build a huge, compelling structure that brings in tourists based on architecture as much as wine. Learn how wine tourism differs around the world and what techniques you might be able to employ in your own business.

We hope you like the topics! Please note this is subject to change. We’ll be announcing the actual presenters soon, so stay tuned.

Wine Tourism Conference Call For Speakers

April 19, 2012 by Allan

We have added a draft Agenda for the 2012 Wine Tourism Conference. The next step is to solicit speaker suggestions.

If you would like to suggest yourself or someone else as a speaker for the conference, please email allan@winetourismconference.org with the following information:

Speaker Name, Title, and Company/Organization
Suggested Topic
Suggested Place on Agenda: This could be as a Keynote Speaker, on the Panel of Key Wine Industry Figures, on the Panel of Key Tourism Industry Figures, or as a breakout topic presenter.
Contact Status: Is the speaker interested and available, are you just suggesting someone you don’t know, or somewhere in between?

We had a fantastic lineup of 2011 Speakers and hope to equal or improve on this in 2012.

2012 Wine Tourism Conference to be November 14-15 in Sonoma County

March 19, 2012 by Allan

We are very pleased to announce the 2012 Wine Tourism Conference will take place at the Flamingo Resort in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California.

Granted, this really wasn’t our idea. At the first Wine Tourism Conference this past November, attendees overwhelmingly voted to make the conference an annual event and when Ken Fischang from the Sonoma County Tourism Bureau suggested Sonoma as the next location, he was greeted by loud cheers.

We again have an incredible array of local partners (see the list to the right) who will help guide us in determining content and speakers. If you have any suggestions for content, topics, or speakers, please email Allan Wright at allan@winetourismconference.org.

Three additions to the conference we will definitely include, based on participants’ suggestions:

A formal Networking Session where you will be able to meet many if not all the other attendees. With the 2011 Wine Tourism Conference attendees being a veritable Who’s Who list of wine tourism professionals, this is an important aspect of the conference.
Industry Tracks for segments of the wine tourism communities (wineries, winery associations, tourism associations, tour operators, etc) so you can discuss issues that pertain specifically to your business or organization.
We will offer Breakout Sessions that will allow us to have smaller, more intimate discussions in addition to the large all-group speakers and panels.

Registration is open so please join us in November in Sonoma County!

2012 Wine Tourism Conference to be Announced Soon

February 17, 2012 by Allan

We are working hard to finalize the date and host hotel for the 2012 Wine Tourism Conference. While we don’t have exact details yet, it will likely be in November in Sonoma County, as requested by a majority of those attending the conference this past November.

Please stay tuned for details. If you have interest in speaking at or sponsoring the conference, send us an email.