For several years now, Robin Shaw has taken groups on an immersion tour of South African wineries, showing them everything from tasting rooms to architectural wonders.
“Since my first visit in 2004 I have been impressed by the level of sophisticated wine experiences infused with a high standard of hospitality in virtually every region,” she says.
What's surprising is that Shaw, an Australian who runs a company called Wine Tourism Australia, is not taking wine lovers on her tours. She's taking international wine tourism professionals, to show them one of the world's most innovative destinations.
The emergence of a juggernaut
During the apartheid era, South Africa was cut off from the world’s wine markets. Unable to export, they developed sophisticated inbound wine tourism much earlier than in other countries.
In 2022, wine tourism — still recovering from Covid — contributed 3 bn Rand ($162.2 bn) to South Africa’s GDP. The indirect spend was 9.3 bn R.
Significantly, South Africa Wine had believed that the wine tourism sector wouldn't rebound to its pre-Covid levels until at least the end of 2023.
"When we did the macroeconomic analysis on the wine industry's performance in 2022, we saw that we had not only fully recovered but surpassed 2019 levels," says Marisah Nieuwoudt, wine tourism manager for South Africa Wine. "This was ahead of tourism recovery in South Africa at large, and globally."
South African wineries enjoy an advantage not available to most wineries in the rest of the world: abundant and affordable labour. This makes it easier for South African wineries to expand their offerings as the opportunity arises. But it’s a benefit that cuts both ways; in the third quarter of 2024, South Africa’s unemployment rate stood at 32.1%, which means that wineries offer a critical pathway to work for many people — the sector employs between 12,000 and 14,000 people, depending on the time of year, not counting the 80,000 people who work full time in the wine trade.
“What we’ve also seen is that wine tourism is getting increasingly important for our wineries as a revenue stream,” says Nieuwoudt.
Who is a wine tourist?
In 2022, South Africa Wine wanted to know who was visiting wineries, so they borrowed a framework from research done in New Zealand. “We went out to wineries and interviewed about 800 people. We segmented our tourists for our wineries and gave them three types of tourists to keep in mind.”
1. Wine lovers
The first type was the wine lover, who turned out to represent 20% of people that visited wineries.
“That group of people I would class as an intentional wine tourist, because they travel for food and wine,” says Nieuwoudt. “They consume food and wine magazines. They belong to a wine club.”
2. Curious tourists
At the other end of the spectrum are ‘curious tourists’. “These are the guys that are not necessarily knowledgeable about wine,” she says. “They’re here on holiday and they’ve heard that it’s one of the main things you’ve got to do.”
Normally these aren’t people who would travel just for wine. But because they’ve heard it’s a ‘must do’, wine is one of the differentiators that draws them to South Africa, as opposed to any of the other many African destinations offering wildlife and beaches. This group represents about 15-20% of visitors.
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