Noémie Catier is a consultant in wine tourism, working with numerous Wine Paris & Vinexpo Paris exhibitors.
How does wine tourism help to promote vineyards and products?
Wine tourism is an accessible means of global promotion and developing direct sales.
Opening up your estate, showing off your profession, inviting visitors to live a real experience, highlighting your products in a real-life situation and creating events are all ways of gaining notoriety and increasing turnover. However, this requires a real investment on the part of the winegrower, both in terms of resources (human and financial) and in terms of availability.
Is wine tourism only a complementary activity of an estate?
Wine tourism should not only be considered as a complementary activity, but as an integral part of the estate, with its own seasonality and organisation. It is too often considered as an ancillary activity, whereas it can be easily added into an already busy organisation.
Setting up a wine tourism project is never trivial in terms of cost and time, especially if you want to give yourself the means to make it work!
How has wine tourism evolved and how do you see the future of this sector?
Wine tourism is clearly in line with the development trends of wine estates, as visitors are increasingly interested in activities, discoveries and shared experiences. The evolution of technologies supports this development with the great boom of virtual visits for example. But a simple winegrower’s lunch also delights wine lovers! It seems to me that the possibilities really are numerous and that it is necessary to consider things according to one’s own means and objectives, to know how to target an audience, to communicate well, and there you go! Don’t hesitate to ask for help to manage it !
Photo: © Vincent Agnes