Tour Booking Software How-To: Wine Tours

Need to book more reservations for your wine tour? Consider mixing wine tasting with activities that match certain tourism demographics. This 'Tour Booking Software How-To' looks at the Mix & Match approach and ways you can adapt it to your wine tasting tour.

Wine Tours + Trolley

Just about every destination city in the country has a trolley tour of some kind. The old-timey mode of transportation has consistently proven to be one of the most popular activities with tourists because of its affordability and maximum amount of sightseeing in the minimal amount of time. Even though trolley tours find the most favor with families and large groups, that doesn't mean the vintage vehicles cannot be part of a demographic that is sans children - like a wine tour.

Just recently the Cornell Sun published a list of activities for singles, couples and college students in Ithaca, New York titled 'Spoonfuls of Sunshine: Celebrate Spring the Foodie Way' which includes wine tours. Author Sarah McKeen points readers to the dozens of wine tasting events near Ithaca:

Go on a Wine Tour - Forget the amazing course options, the diverse population and the gorgeous campus. All of these things are seriously great, but the best part about going to Cornell is definitely having access to Finger Lakes wine...Stopping at multiple wineries on a wine tour of the Finger Lakes region, however, is an incomparable way to spend a Saturday.

Wine Tour Trolley is one of the available tours in the Finger Lakes region matching demographics with activities. After booking a tour, guests enjoy a fun day riding in the open-air trolley as it stops at five wineries and two brew houses. Note the the trolley tour operates independently of the beverage producers in a B2B agreement. And that same cooperation between businesses continues with the local hotels. The Wine Trolley Tour lists all of the tour stops, points of departure and ancillary services on its website.

The Wine Tour Trolley makes use of online tour booking software for the convenience of out of town visitors, but has yet to implement total integration with the websites of its business partners. Your wine tour may have a similar cooperative with nearby goods and services (traditional shuttle, bed and breakfast, etc.) but how about a trolley ride? A quick Google search "trolley" may be all that's needed to get more bookings for your wine tour.

Wine Tours + Bicycle

Up one level on the adventure scale are scenic bicycle tours, which was the focus of a previous post. 'How to add bicycles to a walking tour' listed the B2B cooperatives in Napa Valley, the original birth-place of the wine tour.

In the Napa valley area of northern California there are several dozen scenic tours that are conducted on bicycles. The tours are BYOB or “all inclusive” replete with a comfort bicycle as part of the price. The tours are cooperative efforts between established sightseeing companies and local bike shops combining the two specialties into one shared businesses endeavor...

There are so many wine tours that include bicycles as part of the activity, listing them all would be far beyond the scope of a single blog post. However one shining example is Santa Barbara Wine Country Cycling Tours. The company offers tours to meet the expectations of the demographic in a way any tour operator can learn from. Tours take several scenic routes, tailored for different fitness levels as well as how much time vacationers have to spend. Santa Barbara Wine Country Cycling Tours is also participating in a cooperative effort with area businesses. Hotel accommodations, food and bicycle rental can be incorporated into the booking as part of a bespoke, all-inclusive package either by calling the company or on its website.

Packaging your wine tour, with the hotel stay and the bicycle rental can be a task your guests perform themselves well in advance of the day of the tour. Such a courtesy is recommended since the majority of people plan their vacation weeks, months, even years in advance. As such, your website tour booking software should enable self-service reservations, with or without hotel and bicycle packages, as an alternative to telephone reservations.

Wine Tours + Extreme Excursion

At the very pinnacle of the adventure scale are so-called extreme excursion tours. Made famous by Forbes Magazine back in the 2000s, an extreme excursion tour is a specialty market with unique demographics:

The edge of our atmosphere, the 100-mph barrier in a race boat and the top of the world were all virgin territory a century ago. Today, they are the experiences described in glossy brochures that tout extreme vacations and adventures, at high prices...These adrenaline-pumping excursions to a collective midlife crisis of baby boomers armed with enough money and technology to allow them to go where only the world's elite adventurers could go before.

Indeed, the wealthy baby boomer demographic just so happens to also love wine. That excursion tour/wine aficionado demographic cross-over is being well served by the Legendary Tours of Temecula and their "To the MAXX" wine tour. The extreme sports crowd is treated to area wines at various stops along an exciting tour of Temecula hillsides in a Humvee limousine.

You'll be amazed how THE MAXX  overtakes Temecula's surrounding mesas and buttes along well-groomed trails with relative ease!  Eventually, THE MAXX ascends and sets atop "The Thrill Hill".   Bring your camera!...You will taste 15-18 wines at THREE of the wineries on the prestigious De Portola Wine Trail.  A picnic lunch will be served at at beautiful outdoor venue.

Just as savvy as the trolley and bicycle Mix & Match mentioned earlier, Legendary Tours of Temecula has B2B agreements with local businesses for their wine tour bookings. To bring guests from their hotels, there is a shuttle service that "includes a picnic lunch compliments of Temecula's Boar's Head Deli OR a free bottle of Chardonnay compliments of Stuart Cellars' Winery."

If you are considering adding an activity to your wine tour, take note of how the demographics in each example above are being expertly catered to.

Wine Tour Booking Software For Any Combination

No matter what level on the adventure scale you plan to put your wine tour, the tour booking software you choose will be a deeply ingrained aspect of the online reservations process.

ThunderTix tour booking software has the tools to create a visually rich reservation experience, one that matches what each special demographic expects. Integrating with hotels and other 3rd parties you already work with is easy using ThunderTix's new Event Restricted Access feature. Event restricted access is well suited for 3rd parties that need the ability to sell tickets alongside your events or on their external websites without handing over the keys to your entire kingdom.

And know that we are very well versed in the needs of tour operators. We provide you with the tools that can keep pace with your busy schedule of daily tours and those tools must be able to adapt to special circumstances like a holiday rush. Our tour management technology lets you set at tour date and and time then propagate for every day of the year – all at once – no need to enter the same date and time over and over. When you are ready to get started, please contact us.