With the number of people travelling for food and wine experiences having grown exponentially in recent years, countries like South Africa will have to be quick off the mark if they want to benefit and be a world player.

This was the message from Felicity Carter, editor-in-chief of Meininger’s Wine Business International, speaking at last week’s Business of Wine and Food Tourism conference.

“The opportunity of gastronomy tourism is very clear, but the entire world is after this audience and are working hard to ensure they have the best offering available,” she said.

She said there were several examples of regions in the world making headways in wine tourism that stood as examples to South Africa’s burgeoning wine tourism sector.

“Abrau Durso in Russia has managed to transform itself completely increasing the number of visitors from near nothing to around 160 000 visitors a year,” she said. According to her, the destination invested heavily in transforming its facilities while taking an “upfront and honest” approach to challenges including the mafia connotations that exist around Russia. “It is an approach that has paid off and they are selling around 23 million bottles of wine per year with tourist numbers increasing.”

Carter said collaboration has been a winning approach for Winzer Krems in Austria.

“This cooperative of 981 growers has resulted in a one of a kind tourism experience. Having embarked on growing wine tourism in 2005 they are now drawing some 30 000 people a year.”

She said South Africa could also take lessons from Australia that had not only completely turned global perception around the long-haul country’s food and wine offering, but also increased wine sales by 28% in the past 18 months.

“The country launched Restaurant Australia in mid-2014 and the results of this national strategic approach has been phenomenal. Food and wine now accounts for one in five dollars spent by international tourists in Australia. They have seen a $1 billion incremental increase in food and wine spending,” said Carter.

With the size of the global wine travel market alone estimated to be $17 billion (R238 billion), and the culinary travel market estimated around $25 billion (R350 billion), there was much to be gained from investing in wine tourism, said Carter.

 “Creating a wine tourism destination is not a simple task and often requires millions of dollars. Engaging governments, regions and industry to create a single strategy is a great task and takes time,” she said. “As a country you are going to have work fast if you want to play in the global market.”

Carter advised wineries in the interim to invest in staff training. “It is the Achilles heel of the wine trade all over the world. Time and time again tourists are disappointed by workers at the cellar door.”

She said without having to invest millions of dollars or implementing a non-existant strategy wineries in the country would already see major benefit from investing in staff training alone.

“If you do nothing else but put money into staff training you are already going to have a wide impact on visitors and you will see tourist numbers rise.”