Hosted by the Secretariat of Tourism of the State of Queretaro, international tourism experts met on April 27 at the Santiago de Querétaro Congress Center (Mexico) to discuss new challenges, opportunities, trends and their social impact on destinations, under the slogan “New international trends to take tourism to the next level”.
José Antonio Vidal (Founder President of the Global and Spanish Wine Tourism Organizations), began his speech by clarifying “basic concepts with the aim of speaking the same ‘wine tourism language’, indicating what is not wine tourism -only visiting wineries-, and what it is: Wine Tourism is agri tourism in wine regions, knowing all resources present in wine destinations. In fact, Wine Tourism is the driving force behind Agri tourism”.
The president of GWTO continued his speech by pointing out that “Wine tourism is Tourism (it is neither oenology nor viticulture), stressing the importance that both winery entrepreneurs (investing in professionals in the tourism sector) and public administrations must understand it in this way, and that they must also focus on the types of events they sponsor when it comes to promoting tourism (Wine Tourism): our events -congresses, exhibitions, etc.- are events of, by and for wine tourism (we are Tourism), and not only for the wine industry sector (which we will obviously also support, contributing our collaboration in them when requested)”.
“Professionalization through GWTO Academy, Promotion with GWTO MICE and Marketing through the GWTO Marketplace, strategic axes for Next Level Wine Tourism,” concluded Vidal.
The Forum was also attended by Óscar Rueda (Director of the Executive Presidency of the CAF Development Bank for Latin America), Amora Carbajal (executive president of PromPeru), Maximiliano Mauvecín (secretary general of the South American Tourism Federation), José Carlos de Santiago (president and founder of the Excelencias Group), Juan Francisco Maqueda (founder of the integrated marketing agency LatamOne), Inmaculada Benito (director of the Tourism, Culture and Sports Department of the Spanish Confederation of Business Organizations), Antonio Roldán (professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Dresden –Germany- and International Tourism Advisor), José Ramón Bauzá (member of the European Parliament; spokesman for Renew Europe in the Committee on Transport and Tourism of the European Parliament), and Mohamed Taleb (United Nations expert on Tourism and Territorial Development).
The day ended with the launching of the Querétaro Wine Cluster, in which José Antonio Vidal intervened, together with the Governor and the Secretary of Tourism of the State of Querétaro -Mauricio Kuri and Mariela Morán-, celebrating that “Querétaro’s associationism is an example of how to do things well in terms of coopetitiveness, solidly cementing the bases of its strategic sectors. In this sense, from GWTO we empower the National Wine Tourism Associations, being key in the World Wine Tourism Council”.
The Global Wine Tourism Organization (GWTO) is the network of agri-tourism entrepreneurship and knowledge, made up of private companies located in wine-growing environments, as well as public and academic entities (World Wine Tourism Council), with the objective of contributing to the socio-economic development of destinations and their residents, in accordance with value proposals aligned with the United Nations.
