Welcome to the Wine Tourism Toolkit - the most comprehensive resource for Australian wine businesses. This Toolkit contains the collective knowledge of some of our industry's most successful operators with expert contributions from the wine, food and hospitality, tourism, marketing and training sectors.

Touring this Toolkit is like visiting a wine region. Around every corner you can discover something new, interesting and educational. You can choose to journey down the many winding roads and uncover the layers or you can skim across the surface and enjoy a tantalising summary of what's inside. It's a powerful source of information that you can access at the click of a button - any time.

The Wine Tourism Toolkit is a resource unlike anything ever created for the Australian Wine Industry. It features detailed information about every aspect of establishing and operating a successful wine tourism business - delivered in a user friendly style and supported by checklists, templates and case studies.

So, it's time to get clicking and go touring.


The Toolkit is an initiative of the Winemakers' Federation of Australia (WFA) and was made possible by grant funding through the Commonwealth Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources. WFA members also enjoy many other business-enhancing benefits. To see how WFA can help you, visit www.wfa.org.au.

Why is wine tourism important?
Industry analysis has shown that by definition a regional winery is a tourism business and that wine tourism activity is now an imperative for the profitability of small wineries.

The role of Cellar Door in most wine businesses is to generate improved revenues, build customer relationships and add value to a brand through the vineyard and winery experience. If these resemble your main goals, this interactive guide will become a partner in your success.

Wineries face many challenges in the pursuit of commercial viability.

These include:

Retail consolidation and discounting, both in Australia and in key export markets.

Export competitiveness, the strong Australian Dollar and low value volume sales in the US and UK

Continuing expansion in the number of small wineries, the increasing range of brands and retailers' own brands.

How does a winery achieve profitable performance in this competitive environment?
By implementing strategic and intelligent practices across all levels of the business and by understanding that the ultimate goal is customer satisfaction.

One of the keys to operating a successful cellar door facility is understanding the business you're in. Unlike the production and distribution functions of your business, the cellar door requires an entirely different approach, because you're now part of the tourism and hospitality industry.

And herein lies the challenge for would-be wine tourism operators: most simply don't have the necessary skills and experience to run an effective tourism and hospitality business.

At this point you need to make an important decision:

1. Invest in acquiring hospitality skills
2. Delegate to professional cellar door managers, or
3. Don't open a cellar door facility.

There really is no room for other options, because the competition for visitors in Australia's wine regions is fierce as numbers steadily grow.
Cellar Door and Wine Tourism are a part of regional destination tourism. Strong regions and strong wine brands both contribute to the capacity for visitor attraction, and understanding how the tourism system works will promote a collaborative culture.

Working in partnership with food and tourism to maximise the benefits and opportunities will improve your potential for success and this Toolkit explores and facilitates these relationships.