Sunday, July 17, 2011

Vindaba, Specialist Wine Tourism Exhibition

South Africa will host its first specialist wine tourism exhibition, Vindaba, in Cape Town in September next year.

The organisers plan to turn Vindaba into a world-class event that will assume the status of a leading wine exhibition among the international wine and travel fraternities. It will also offer specialist seminars, focus on gastro-tourism and provide tailor-made wine tours for the international and domestic travel business fraternity.

Although conceived as a stand-alone event, it will be staged simultaneously with Cape Wine 2012 at the Cape Town Convention Centre.

Minister of Tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, has identified South Africa’s wine tourism as central to marketing the country as an attractive long-haul destination. Speaking at a tourism stakeholder workshop in April, he said: “Wine tourism is a vital product offering in South Africa’s tourism product as it helps improve the country’s competitiveness against destinations like Brazil, Australia, Kenya and Thailand.”

Although Australia has a highly developed wine tourism industry, many of its wine regions are located far apart, unlike South Africa where production is concentrated mostly in the Western Cape.

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