Ultimate Winery Experiences - Customer Success Story

Transcript

The last 18 months has been interesting. 2019 for the ultimate winery experiences was a boom. We were really gaining momentum. We had 130 classic bookable experiences that were available on a daily basis, and sales and bookings were really growing.

Of course, after Christmas, as the summer moved on, we saw a lot of changes. The bushfires had a massive impact on the East Coast. Our wineries in the King and Alpine valleys were evacuated. Some evacuated a couple of times. The wineries in the Hunter Valley were really impacted by smoke taint, so it was really tough on the East Coast. Thankfully, wine production was considered an essential service, so behind the scenes, the winemakers have been neurons. All the workers in the vineyards continued on with their work.

My name is Kate Shilling. I’m the executive officer at Ultimate Winery Experiences Australia. We represent a collective of 25 wineries from around the country. They’re in 15 different wine regions. We’ve been able to maintain momentum for a couple of really important reasons.

One is we understand that our visitors and our bookers are more likely to book relatively close to the date of the actual experience. So we’ve been able to set up all the experiences in our reservation system so that they’re available right up until that last minute.

The second really important aspect is partnership. We’ve made sure that all our wineries are partnered with the major online players and the major retail players as well so that they are well-placed to attract any visitor, any traveler who happens to be coming to the region looking for a different experience and opportunity to go beyond the cellar door.

"a reservation system is essential when it comes to gathering all the information relating to a booking, whether it's inventory pricing as well as that finance path into one place"

Our wineries have recognized that a reservation system is essential when it comes to gathering all the information relating to a booking, whether it’s inventory pricing as well as that finance path into one place, the reservation systems have enabled them to maintain flexibility and be agile.

There are a range of different ways that our wineries were able to really champion the other suppliers in their own regions. They were able to create experiences that included the cheesemakers and the bakers, as well as the other wineries around them, to really showcase that destination in both products that were available for sale as produce boxes as well as virtual experiences that they were able to then load into SD and sell to a wider audience.

Collaboration has always been one of the criteria for membership of Ultimate Winery Experiences, and we’ve seen some really great examples where our wineries have been able to collaborate with each other to create amazing experiences going from winery to winery in different regions, as well as work with other like-minded tourism products.

Our wineries are really excited to be back in the world of wine tourism and as the year rolls on and travelers start to emerge from the East Coast and further afield, I know that they’re really excited to be able to develop and deliver to these visitors a chance to see Bordeaux in their own backyard.