Why go for wine tourism when we’re winegrowers?

4 min read
L'oenotourisme en France, un potentiel mal exploité

Wine Tourism in France

Wine tourism is more than just a matter of being trendy but a real quest to discover wine regions and local products, by visitors from all over the world! This phenomenon has grown enormously since the wine estates realized that a significant part of their turnover was in the promotion of their wines through an offer of ancillary activities.

Just as winemakers and estates have always tasted and sold “on the property”, others offer discovery or learning workshops, lodging or gastronomic experiences that go well with their wines. All these ancillary activities directly participate in the discovery of vineyards and domain know-how by visitors, thus directly influencing their sales volume.

France, a huge wine tourism potential that is still underdeveloped.

Let’s look at the figures: 10 million wine tourists in France in 2016 (for 5.2 billion euros in revenue), a market up 30% between 2009 and 2016 (Source: Atout France). But the hexagon remains behind the United States, or other European countries like Italy or Spain, in terms of wine tourism offer. Why?

  • Low number of properties open to the public: only 10% of the 6,000 Bordeaux properties in 2016 for example.
  • Communication problem for domains: how to communicate? In what language? And how to explain that days and times of opening can change from one day to another for example? If the offer exists, it is not always readable or accessible to visitors, not to mention that more than 4 wine tourists out of 10 in France are foreign.

Why did we create Winalist, wine tourism specialist?

Winalist is a platform that standardizes wine tourism informations and connects wine-growing estates and tourists who are interested by visiting estates. The principle is simple:

  • The tourist: French or foreign, looking for a domain or a wine tourism experience on the platform according to their criteria (location, availability, opinion,…). All you have to do is choose the activity they like, in the fields listed on the website and then book for free.
  • The vineyard: subscribes to Winalist and chooses the activities it wishes to offer to tourists. It defines the duration of each activity and the opening days/hours. A very simple dashboard allows each area to manage its unavailability, reservations, reviews, etc. Bonus: The Winalist reservation calendar can be synchronized directly with the Exchange, Google, iCloud,… calendars!

Winalist doesn’t hide its ambition to become the market leader in wine tourism and the team makes it a point of honor to promote the French and international terroirs. This is why the vineyards present on Winalist will directly benefit from increased visibility thanks to the know-how of the Winalist team, with their experience in communication, web advertising targeting and social networks. Winalist’s teams are also responsible for promoting the fields with local organizations in charge of tourism.

More than an information and reservation platform, Winalist is an intermediary between the two players in the flourishing wine tourism sector.

Goal? Simplify everything!

Winalist is available in 11 languages helps visitors from all over the world to book wine tourism experiences easily.

A simple concept based on precious assets: a website available in 11 languages to offer an international influence on the activities of our guests, online prepayment which reduces the no-show rate and which secures the time of our wine professionals and finally, the guarantee for visitors of the availability of their chosen activities. Thanks to Winalist, tourists could easily discover France and Europe regions through their wine terroirs.

Using Winalist, what are the benefits for wineries?

Getting listed on a wine tourism platform becomes essential for the growth of wine estates. If the wine-grower is the wine expert, Winalist knows how to make the most of it with Internet users!

Nowadays, everything goes online! No one speaks of “digitalization” or even “uberization” but that simply means that the Internet has become the main source of customers, French and foreign, for the fields: 9 out of 10 wine tourists organize their stays alone and leave with bought wine after the experience (maybe 10 of them after they’ll read our article buy your wine directly from the winemaker)

What does Armelle Cruse, manager of Château du Taillan, questioned by Les Echos about wine tourism think? “Wine tourism like visits and sales to individuals represent, with the rental activity for receptions, 40% of the turnover of the property, or some 20,000 bottles out of a total of 150,000” specifies the oenologist. On her property, she offers several workshops and visits from forty-five minutes to an hour and a half, dinners at the chateau and emphasizes that going through the Internet makes it possible to address the young generation “who frequents wine bars but for whom castles are a bit like daddy’s wine”.

Being visible and offering your activities on Winalist does not alter the authenticity of the wine making work. Wine tourism, discovering its unique know-how and finding a new audience each day who knows how to appreciate it has become necessary for the domains.

Being visible will allow you to directly increase your attendance rate and therefore your sales volume; so don’t wait, add your wine tourism business on Winalist, only 15 minutes necessary!

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