Scoping Revenue Opportunity for a Wine Trail

Challenge

The Seneca Lake Wine Trail, one of the Finger Lakes most visited trails, is a consortium of 30 member wineries and serves thousands of visitors and customers every year. Among others, the Trail offers several Special Event Weekends food and wine pairing events that bring in thousands of visitors each year. These large crowds and events are different than the Trail’s normal traffic and the wineries wanted to know if customers found them to be disruptive and if they generated future revenue.

Insight

Level 7 worked with Trail’s board of directors to segment three distinct audiences; those who had attended multiple Special Event Weekend events, those who had only been to one, and Trail visitors who had never attended. The board wanted to understand what a Special Event Weekend patron might look like, what drove their reasons to attend (or not attend) the events, and how satisfied they were with the experience. The Board had struggled with convincing wineries to take part because of anecdotal feedback that the events were more disruptive than beneficial for business.

Solution

Level 7 developed a research methodology which included a 600-person online study of the Trail’s customer segments. The study included demographic and psychographic exploration of their impressions of the events, what messages were most influential, their buying habits, and their future visit plans. We also examined loyalty measures and developed personas for the ideal Special Event Weekend patron.

Results

Results of the research were eye-opening to both the board and the larger consortium of wineries. Whereas many of the wineries’ owners felt the events were disruptive, didn’t drive future visits or sales, and turned off many of their customers – they could not be further from the truth.

Level 7 learned for those who attended a single event, 83% stated that their experience drove them to purchase from Seneca Lake wineries. And for those who attended multiple events, it was 96%. Three-quarters of all attendees noted that they go back to the wineries they liked at the event and 58% said they look for those wineries in their local shops. And 78% considered themselves very satisfied with the events and thought that were fun and enjoyable.

Overall, it turned out that the events were an economic engine that most trails could only hope for.