The keynote at the Wine Tech Symposium 2025 by Lavinia Furlani, President of Wine Meridian and co-founder of the Wine Tourism Hub, revolved around one powerful idea: “In wine, we can choose. And when we choose, we see results.”
At the heart of her talk were the people who make wine tourism happen: owners, hospitality managers, front-desk staff, sales teams. This is where everything begins. The Wine Tourism Hub was created to guide these professionals from improvisation to method, helping wineries turn their on-site experiences into concrete, measurable, sustainable results.
Table of contents:
- How to better manage the visitors already coming to your winery
- People as the real competitive advantage in wine tourism
- From field to paper: the Italian Wine Tourism Manual
- Choosing wine tourism, not enduring it
How to better manage the visitors already coming to your winery
Lavinia shared some of the questions wineries ask most often:
- “How do I bring more visitors?”,
- “How can I increase direct sales?”,
- “How do I communicate my values more clearly?”
All legitimate questions, but often focused only on quantity. The Wine Tourism Hub suggests flipping the perspective: before asking for “more”, are you sure you are managing well the visitors you already have?
During the past two years of consulting, the network met wineries hosting large events where, at the end, guests barely remembered the winery’s name or even a single wine. Others were perceived as “too expensive” or “too distant”, not because of pricing, but because the team couldn’t convey the winery’s identity as clearly as the owner. Some wineries had excellent visitor numbers but wine shops that barely sold due to poor processes, ineffective layouts, or missed moments that should naturally lead customers toward a purchase.
Often, the issue isn’t the territory or the offering, it’s the “how”. How guests are welcomed, how storytelling is done, how feedback and reviews are encouraged, how sales are introduced in a natural, non-invasive way. Wine tourism grows when it moves from a one-off event to a structured journey where every touchpoint has meaning and continuity.
Listen to Lavinia Furlani’s full keynote at the Wine Tech Symposium 2025
People as the real competitive advantage in wine tourism
A common thread runs through all the cases shared by Lavinia: the human factor. In many wineries, the problem is not lack of ideas or investment, it’s that the team is not empowered to express its full potential. Some are excellent storytellers but freeze when it comes to selling, as if sales “devalued” their role. Others welcome visitors beautifully but have no strategy to turn “thank you, it was wonderful” into an online review. Others run flawless experiences but never connect them to a re-visit invitation, a newsletter signup, or a Wine Club conversion.
This is where the Wine Tourism Hub steps in: providing tools, language, examples. Working on layout, designing storytelling moments, managing time and groups.
Most importantly, supporting the team in seeing sales as a natural part of the winery experience. For visitors, buying wine is not a burden, it’s almost physiological when the experience has been authentic and well-structured.
From field to paper: the Italian Wine Tourism Manual
After two years of work inside wineries, Lavinia and the Wine Tourism Hub team felt the need to put order into everything learned on the field. This led to the creation of the “Italian Wine Tourism Manual: From Improvisation to Method”, written by professionals who support wineries daily in their development.
This is not a book to read once and shelve, but a practical and operational tool: frameworks, reflections, examples, guiding questions to understand where and how to improve, and how to leverage resources by putting them into a system.
As Lavinia says: “We can’t give you the perfect recipe, because the ingredients are already in your winery. But we can help you build the method.”
Buy the Italian Wine Tourism Manual
Choosing wine tourism to make it grow
Lavinia shared a simple yet powerful message: wine tourism grows when it is chosen, not when it is hoped for. If you believe, you see. If you choose, you change.
Wine tourism is no longer a passing trend or an “extra” for when there is spare time. It is a fundamental part of the future of Italian wineries. But to truly work, it must be chosen, structured, and guided by trained people supported by the right partners.
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