About 25% 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% of international visitors visiting a vineyard or winery increased to 42% 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."
Sharing information with the industry about international visitors would help 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, part of a strategy to grow wine exports to $2billion 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 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.
At a glance
Northland 25
Auckland 90
Waikato/Bay of Plenty 16
Gisborne 14
Hawke’s Bay 63
Wairarapa 51
Nelson 32
Marlborough 68
Canterbury 38
Central Otago 65
