A new competition that will award the world’s best wine travel and wine tour experiences has been launched. “The Wine Travel Awards”. It is a competition for anyone in the wine sector, wineries, tour operators, wine writers and bloggers, wine education organisations etc. But it is also a kind of marketing campaign to promote wine tourism and wine travel in general. You have until February 28 to become part of this great project. We talked to the founders of the Drinks+ Wine Travel Awards.
One should perhaps always be sceptical to anyone touting “the world’s best”. The World’s Best Restaurant. The World’s Best Pinot Noir. The World’s Best Rosé. Who can know? But the competitions that announce these winners often do serve an important purpose. They promote good things, and they make people discover new things. So why not also “The World’s Best Wine Tourism”?
Drinks+, a wine and spirits magazine, has recently launched a new competition for wine tourism, The Wine Travel Awards. I must say that it takes some determination and defiance of circumstances to undertake such a project in the current times. Travel of any sort, and wine travel too, is suffering these days. But perhaps that is not so surprising. The people behind the Wine Travel Awards come from Ukraine; as we all know, a country that is facing a lot of challenges, so launching a wine tourism competition is maybe a lesser one.
And why not? One day, sooner rather than later, we hope, travel will take off again. So maybe now is a good time to start promoting the idea of visiting vineyards and promoting quality experiences for wine travellers.
I certainly hope that we will see this relaunch of wine travel sooner rather than later. As you probably know, BKWine is one of the leaders in wine tourism; organising wine tours is one of our main activities. So it is very important to us.
The Wine Travel Awards main organiser is the Ukrainian magazine Drinks+ focussing on wine, other drinks and gastronomy. To know more about what they want to achieve, I asked a few questions to Olga Pinevich-Todoriuk, the editor in chief of Drinks+, and Veronika Busel, managing partner at the Wine Travel Awards.
But before we kick off, I’ll give you a few details about the competition.
- It is open to everyone, anywhere in the world—in any wine region across the globe.
- There are several different categories to compete in, for example:
- “Destinations”
- “Ambassadors”
- Influencers, including journalists, bloggers, photographers etc
- Education
- Wine guides and wine tour operators
- Events
- The last date of applying to compete in the awards: 28 February 2022
- There’s a modest fee to participate, but journalist, bloggers, influencers etc participate for free thanks to a sponsorship by Vinos de la Luz. (Contact the organisers if you have questions.)
- All info is on the web site winetravelawards.com, including news from the nominees and other wine travel industry information
They call it “an international project aimed at restoring and rebooting the tourism and wine industries”.
I started by asking Olga and Veronika about the background.
What gave you the idea to launch the Wine Travel Awards?
“For many years, we have been observing serious changes in the wine and wine tourism market, with more active involvement in the industry of new players (bloggers, influencers, representatives of the new media) and their growing influence. This trend has been reinforced by the Covid-19 era. It, even more, triggers the need to strengthen digitalisation processes, the free transition of wine tourism (fuelling interest in it and its services) from offline to online and vice versa. We believe that the trend is there, the market is ready, and demand for greater inclusiveness in the wine industry definitely exist.”
“The mission of the Wine Travel Awards is to promote the principles of sustainable development, growth, and globalisation of markets, to support the industry that was heavily affected by the covid-19 pandemic. The focus will be on promoting new business models in the wine tourism sector, impacting the development of regions.”
You are based in Ukraine, so is this oriented to eastern European countries?
“Right now, the operational team is working from 3 countries: Ukraine, Portugal and France, and our partners’ geography is much broader and spread to 4 continents. Our ambition is to make the Wine Travel Awards international; all partners and nominees will receive international attention.”
“In the first year of the award’s existence, 2021-2022, the focus is initially on eight countries: Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova. But we welcome participation from all countries and will continue in coming years to make it even more international.”
There are other wine travel competitions around the world. How is The Drinks+ Wine Travel Awards different?
“Our strategic goal with the Wine Travel Awards is to make it different from other world awards and industry initiatives with a unique vision and strategy, as well as the almost 30 years of experience of the Drinks + Media Group.”
“The Wine Travel Awards will be an annual awards event with a new format. This is not a rating but a global advertising campaign that engages with wine professionals and wine enthusiasts through PR, digital and on the ground activation. The aim is to draw attention to the nominees from all over the world. We want to unite in the community of people interested in wine tourism.”
What are your objectives? What do you want to achieve with The Wine Travel Awards?
“We want to promote selected products and strengthen destinations in a unique manner. Attracting public attention to the products of wine tourism and the wine industry is transformable into brand awareness, loyalty and sales of goods and services.”
“We believe that the association of wine tourism actors within the WTA community will also promote networking, facilitating future partnerships, projects and investments in the industry.”
“We will engage with new progressive representatives of the industry, to unite the community by creating information support and establish links within the community, to give more tools for business development, to contribute to the digitalisation of the wine tourism business. We want to build an inclusive wine tourism community (including the involvement of influencers and bloggers) that will contribute to the development of new wine tourism products and services online.”
Who should participate? Is it open to everyone? And why should one participate?
“We want to bring to this initiative all sorts of wine tourism businesses; wine and spirits companies, wine museums, wineries, restaurants, hotels and tasting rooms, distilleries, wine roads and associations, wine and food festivals, wine schools and other establishments that form enogastronomic routes.”
“However we make our focus on individuals and personalities – ambassadors of wines and wine regions, influencers, bloggers, wine journalists, writers, wine guides, winemakers, sommeliers, content creators (including photographers), etc.; all those who write, shoot and broadcast information to the world about wine travels.”
“Every year we will publish a WTA Guide, the final catalogue of nominees, which will be distributed at the world’s leading wine exhibitions and the WTA events. We believe this catalogue can become a collector’s edition on wine tourism which will be published annually for those interested in wine tourism.”
“In this way, we form a community of interests that is designed to attract more ideas, innovations, new and industry-relevant initiatives, various partnerships, finances and investments.”
“We give voice to completely different participants, regardless of their size and capital. We are enabling the traditional wine business to transform its business models online. It is crucial to note that the tourism industry, and wine tourism in particular, has been hit hard and found to be very vulnerable in the face of the pandemic. We give new tools to businesses and individuals to upgrade themselves and restart the industry.”
Thank you, Veronika and Olga.
As you can see, there is no lack of ambition or plans. If you want to participate in the “competition”, which is perhaps more like a joint effort to promote wine tourism of all sorts, then you have until February 28, 2022, to do so, to register.
I should also mention that I take a particular interest in this project since I have been asked to be one of the judges evaluating the different projects.
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