This, together with the appointment of a new Vinpro wine tourism manager in January, Marisah Nieuwoudt, together with a Memorandum of Understanding between the SA Wine Route Forum and Vinpro, make way for a new era of collaboration, innovation and opportunities for local wine tourism.
The aim of this new partnership is to leverage South African wine regions and brands to strengthen the entire sector, to further develop it and to gain international recognition.
The collective efforts will be focussed on engaging travel trade, domestic and international media hosting, using events as showcases for South Africa’s wine tourism offering and optimising digital marketing channels. This will run parallel to a research agenda, quality management programme and creating training opportunities for wine industry workers.
The vision is to establish South Africa as a leading wine tourism destination in the global arena, recognised for memorable experiences, quality wine, exceptional food and a commitment to responsible tourism.
“Through developing and broadening wine tourism together, we would like to attract a greater range of visitors to South Africa and improve the spread of visitors to smaller and rural areas,” says Christo Conradie, manager of Vinpro’s cellar division. “We also want to encourage locals to travel to the source of wine and experience a wide range of experiences in various wine regions, thus contributing to the growth of domestic tourism, especially at rural level with a direct impact on enterprise development and job creation.
“This will have a knock-on effect on increased employment and new business opportunities within the wine and wine tourism sector, as well as within the wine regions generally with the focus on black enterprise development and employment.”
Wesgro CEO, Tim Harris, welcomed the signing of the MOU with Vinpro. “With the Western Cape making the 10 Best Wine Getaways list in 2018 by Wine Enthusiast, the timing of this agreement could not be better. Wine tourism in our province is on the up, and we are excited about working together with Vinpro to make sure that we leverage the many opportunities that continue to present themselves in the growing wine tourism sector.
“We are confident that the marketing projects that we will soon engage on will help increase the awareness of wine tourism experiences in the province and help drive visitor numbers across the region,” Harris concluded.