Tourism boom ripe for picking, says wine industry

Wineries are choosing to increase their tourism offerings as part of a strategy to grow annual wine exports to $2 billion by 2020. Picture / NZME

Tourism New Zealand and New Zealand Winegrowers have joined forces to support the growing trend of international visitors seeking out a "wine experience" while touring New Zealand.

About 25 per cent of international tourists sought out a wine experience, latest figures from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's international visitor survey showed.

Tourism NZ marketing director Andrew Fraser said the 25 per cent of international visitors visiting a vineyard or winery increased to 42 per cent for those who visited to cycle or golf.

"It's a growing market that is ripe for the picking and we want to help industry get a share of that business by helping them better understand the opportunity."

Short-term visitor arrivals, which include tourists, people visiting family and friends and people travelling for work, reached 3.7 million in the October year, up 8 per cent from a year earlier and a new annual record.

Sharing information with the industry about international visitors would help people understand what they were looking for and what they expected from a great experience, he said.

New Zealand had a range of vineyard experiences on offer across the country.

Tourism NZ and NZ Winegrowers worked with industry representatives and digital specialists to produce new interactive online tools to help the wine industry grow the value of their tourism business. Those modules were now online.

NZ Winegrowers global marketing head Chris Yorke said wineries around New Zealand were choosing to increase their tourism offerings as part of a strategy to grow wine exports to $2 billion annually by 2020.

"We've always done wine tourism well but we're taking that up a notch."

The online tools had been received well by the industry. Wine tourism numbers were expected to increase as a result of the initiative, he said.

The set of six interactive online learning tools, including topics such as leveraging digital marketing, improving service quality and harnessing the Chinese visitor market, could be used on desktop or mobile, making it easy for the industry to access.