South African wine festival's success on Facebook

Wednesday, 4 June, 2008
Rosendal Winery
Geir Tellefsen, a Norwegian citizen living in South Africa and owner of the Rosendal Winery and Wellness Retreat in Robertson, utilized his knowledge about IT and marketing to move the Wacky Wine Weekend, a traditional wine festival, into the 21st century reality of Facebook.
"There has been many surprised faces in the South African wine industry when they see that more than 2,000 people have signed up on a traditional wine festival in Robertson within weeks of launching the event," says Geir before he continues about the change in South Africa and globally

"...we can see that the members of the Facebook group are significant lower than the general audience at Wacky Wine Weekend, with Facebook we reach the group between 18 and 30 very efficiently."

Geir believes in new methods of communication with their guests and customers with more than 25,000 people subscribing to the monthly newsletter on e-mail, securing more than half of the bookings at the Rosendal wellness retreat. Geir is no new-comer in the business of e-commerce.

"It is surprisingly how low adaptation rate there is in the tourism and wine industry towards new mediums like Facebook, YouTube and electronic blogs when you see the type of response rate we can have with this kind of tools," says Geir Tellefsen.

For more information go to the Wacky Wine Weekend's site on Facebook on or visit the web site of Rosendal Winery & Wellness Retreat www.rosendalwinery.com - which actually is a blog where thousands of people subscribe to the updated content.