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Bridge: ‘Cellar door sales are a thing of the past’
Adrian Bridge, CEO of The Fladgate Partnership, has argued that wine tourism – at least in Porto – needs to focus less on cellar door wine sales and more on creating “good old-fashioned ambassadors.”
Speaking to the drinks business in Porto recently on the subject of wine tourism, Bridge explained that, odd as it might sound, “I don’t want to sell them [visitors] Port. I think cellar door is a thing of the past.”
Portugal is experiencing a tourist boom at the moment with over 11 million people visiting the country last year – the sixth straight year of increased tourism – but at the western-most edge of Europe many come by budget airlines and pack light – it’s not like other regions around the world where people drive around and have the luxury of a car boot to take the weight of a case or two.
“Many people are flying on budget airlines and can’t take a bottle with them and even if they do all you’ve sold is a bottle,” explained Bridge.
“I’d rather prefer they sit down and learn. It’s about making ambassadors through good, old-fashioned word of mouth.”
Not that Taylor’s will be stopping selling wine at its lodge door of course but Bridge went on that he had many ideas about how technology might be used to help the company follow up with visitors, such as by sending them an email or SMS message when they’re home telling them the closest shop where they can buy one of the group’s labels.
“You have to be careful,” he conceded. “You can overdo communication. As long as people opt in it’s a way to extend the level of engagement for those who want it.”
Much change is currently afoot in Porto (or Vila Nova de Gaia more accurately) as the major producers have invested heavily in new visitor centres and hospitality over the last five years – arguably making the city Europe’s leading and most modern destination for wine tourism.
As well as its two hotels in Porto, The Yeatman and Infanta Sagres, Taylor’s revamped its visitor centre last year and has added a new audio tour, which is now available in nine languages (Japanese and South Korean are the latest additions and Mandarin is soon to follow).
The tour has two and a half hours of content (fully approved content that is, Bridge noted that some guides in the past had a habit of going off script occasionally and making things up) but visitors can choose to do, “as much or as little as they like.”
The Fladgate Partnership is also embarking on a €100 million project to turn a 30,000m2 area below the Yeatman Hotel into ‘The World of Wine’ – a museum on the history of Porto, its wines, the cork industry, the textile industry of the region, as well including restaurants and events spaces and an area dedicated to the history of drinking vessels a particular passion of Bridge’s.
With construction slated to start this November, the area is forecast to receive over 500,000 visitors rising to 1 million in its first few years.
Anyone doubting those numbers are possible need only refer to another Port house, Calem, whose lodge is located down by the quay in Gaia.
Last week the Sogevinus-owned company officially opened its new visitor centre which has undergone a €3m revamp.
Patrícia Neves de Sousa, marketing director as Sogevinus, told db that the centre already welcomes 235,000 tourists a year and with the increased space (now up to 3,000m2) the ambition is to exceed 300,000.
With those sort of figures and with each person paying around €7 per head for a visit, one can see why Bridge sees a greater future just in regular ticket sales and educating a captive audience than in hoping visitors, maybe, put their money into buying the odd bottle.
Not that bottle sales are out completely. Paul Symington, co-director of Symington Family Estates, agrees completely with Bridge that opening the lodges to visitors (and the Cockburn’s lodge opened this July with Graham’s having received a major investment a few years ago) should be about creating ambassadors.
‘Treat them well and they’ll be fans for life,” he said to db and part of that experience, occasionally, is the feeling of buying a bottle direct from a producer.
Indeed, since the revamp of the visitor centre at Graham’s the average overall spend per visitor on visits, tastings and bottle purchases has effectively doubled from around €14 to €26-28.
On the other hand, Symington recognised as well that, due to the restrictions of budget air travel, “there will be an upper limit,” to what people could and would buy but, as part of a way round that, at both Cockburn’s and Graham’s visitors from the UK and mainland Europe can arrange to have bottles shipped to them.
Although creating Ambassadors is the aim of every winery which has a cellar door, the revenues made from bottle sales is not insignificant. For many wineries in Napa, it might account for 30% of the business. Some wineries opt to sell 100% of their wine at the cellar door. If a winery sells just just one bottle of Port to each of 300,000 visitors, that represents 25,000 cases, more than most entire countries would buy from any Port house. If the the price per bottle is 27 Euros, that is 8,100,000 in revenue. I think Adrian Bridge is as crazy to ignore this as he is to ignore making Douro table wines.
I visited Taylor’s visitors center (as well as stayed at the extraordinarily comfortable Yeatman Hotel) last November. The whole experience of the audio tour and tasting experience left a lot to be desired. Taylor’s has created an environment that relies on tourist volume rather than quality, personal experience. The audio tour is far too long. We skipped over much of the material due to boredom. As for the tasting following the tour, you pick up your samples from a bar with no personalized service. All they offer is their entry-level white Port and a young LBV. Both were very unpolished Ports and do not represent the quality of Taylor’s portfolio well.
Let me contrast that to the experience at Quinta do Noval’s small tasting salon on the Gaia waterfront. We received a personal tasting experience from a knowledgeable salesperson. The experience was much more in line with global cellar door practices. We got a good education on Noval’s history and tasted a spectrum of wines. It led me to splurge on an older bottle of Colheita to bring back to the States. Noval also built my lasting respect for the brand and appreciation for the quality of their Port.
I work in the design and construction of wineries in Napa and Sonoma, in addition to writing a wine travel blog. For large, historic brands, there is a way to craft your visitor experience to accommodate mass tourism. It involves a highly-trained, personable staff and access to sampling better wines than guests can find on their local grocer’s shelf. From this interview, Bridge seems to understand the importance of creating ambassadors. However, I found the practice far from that sentiment.
I think that Mr Broadbent raises an important issue in Napa as they have relied heavily on the cellar door sales model – this had a great deal to do with the fact that the triple layer distribution system of the USA did not allow wineries to ship out of state. This has now changed and many wineries in California (and other US producing states) ship to their wine club members. That direct to consumer business is very fast growing and is a part of our offer in Portugal (www.onwine.pt) not mentioned in the article.
The second point is that tourism in Europe is now, more than ever, served by discount airlines. They can be expensive to check luggage with and many of their customers chose not to do so, relying on hand luggage to travel through the airport. They then buy at Duty Free. We have an outlet called First Class Wine Bar at the airport that sells our Ports as well as many others and a large range of table wines.
I will not comment on Mr Broadbent’s view on our being in table wine or not. My views are well known and we are very busy with growing demand for quality Port around the world.
Me Seel makes a different set of points and I am sorry that he did not enjoy his experience. Clearly, the advantage of an audio tour is the ability to provide accurate information, in depth, in multiple languages (we offer eleven) and to let people listen to as much, or as little, as they want. Audio guides are used for this reason in the majority of visitor attractions around the world. For the record, we offer our Chip Dry Port and Taylor’s LBV – both special category Ports. We do not serve any entry level Ports as these are not something that our company focussed on. I believe our tasting room staff do an excellent job but clearly not what Mr Seel wanted. I am happy to know that he was well served by Noval who, like many Port producers, offer a first rate visitors’ experience.
To restate the case. Wine tourism is moving on. The original motivator for many was cellar door sales and this is not what consumers are looking for today. They can get a retail in many places but are looking for a greater level of experience when they are at the winery. We focus on delivery of that experience and allow our retail customers around the world to serve the customers needs. Taylor’s Port can be purchased in 102 countries.
Great article! We see a similar situation in many wine regions of the USA. We used the think that we were in the wine business, focusing on that next $30 bottle sale. Then we realised that we are actually in the tourism business, trying to attract visitors to the winery, where we can sell them those $30 bottles at full retail price. Finally, we have come to realise that we are actually in the Hospitality and Experience business, giving visitors a unique, memorable experience in order to build a value-added life-long relationship, worth hundreds of times more that that $30 bottle sale.