Wine Tourism: a glance back at the campaign

Since 2016 at the very latest, Austria has been considered a top destination nation for wine tourism. This year, the Travvy Awards in New York chose Austria as the best wine travel destination in Europe. And this highly unusual year 2020 made it clear that this award endures even under extremely challenging conditions: the wine industry confronted the Corona crisis with creative and innovative tourism concepts, and the Austrian Wine Marketing Board (AWMB) launched their campaign “Auf zum Wein” on the fly. Since the beginning of August, the AWMB’s biggest wine tourism initiative to date has been attracting all Austrians to a summer of wine, now followed by a vinophile autumn in their own homeland.

With concerted promotion via numerous different communication channels (360-degree campaign), “Auf zum Wein” has thus far achieved a total of 75 million visual contacts. Key performance factors in this rousing success involved a strong online focus, a radio campaign, intensive collaboration with existing and new industry partners, as well as a poster campaign in the winegrowing regions.

The campaign also appeared on digital platforms in neighbouring countries Germany and Switzerland, in order to attract additional tourists from the German language sphere to the winegrowing regions.

The core of the campaign was and remains the website www.aufzumwein.at, which presents the most comprehensive listing of possibilities for wine tourism in the country: 1,800 estates with their individual programmes (Heurigen opening dates, overnight accommodation, cellar door sales) as well as dedicated wine events and happenings in all seventeen winegrowing regions.

From wine and culture in the state of Niederösterreich, offers geared to physical activity and wellness in the wine regions of Burgenland and the Steiermark, all the way to classic Heurigen conviviality in Vienna: the connoisseur as well as the sports-minded tourist will find everything their heart desires.

“A summer of wine like never before in Austria: that was exactly what we wanted to create with ‘Auf zum Wein’. And I do believe we succeeded!”, says CEO Chris Yorke of the AWMB with visible satisfaction. “Feedback from the various regions shows that we were able to bring both longtime customers and many first-time visitors to the wine and to the winegrowers. I am convinced that this has resulted in countless lovely moments with wine, which will also become a factor when folks plan their holidays in the future.”

As part of the campaign, the AWMB also created target-group-specific texts, photos and videos. In future these will be available to all partners – winegrowers, journalists and wine merchants. This created a powerful basis for the topic of wine tourism in Austria to be communicated at a high level and over the long term.

aufzumwein.at