Zephyr Conferences

Beer Tourism Certificate Course

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From 8:30 – 11:30 AM on Tuesday, February 4 we will offer a Beer TOURISM Certificate Course prior to the 2020 Beer Marketing & Tourism Conference in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Beer Tourism is a growing powerhouse in the beer industry, the tourism industry, and even in the sphere of economic development. According to the Brewers Association, there are now over 7,000 breweries in the United States alone. Almost all of these are brewpubs or microbreweries, many of which sell beer only via their tap room or brewpub and thus rely on visitation by locals and tourists for their livelihood.

But just as importantly, these breweries are drawing tourists to cities and regions from outside the area, bringing in sales tax revenue and filling restaurant seats and hotel beds. If you work in marketing for a Destination Marketing Organization, there is a good chance you are paying attention to this and already attempting to market your local area’s beer tourism potential This Beer TOURISM Certificate Course will help you do so.

Course Speakers

Our presenters include Julia Herz from the Brewers Association, Mariah Calagione from Dogfish Head Craft Brewing, Dr. Neil Reid “The Beer Professor,” and Allan Wright of Taste Vacations and the BMTC. See our Beer Tourism Certificate Course page for complete details.

Course Content

The Beer TOURISM Certificate Course will offer three hours of content targeted to DMOs and others interested in beer tourism. This includes:

  • Overview of the beer industry from Brewers Association representative
  • Demographics of beer consumers
  • Economic importance of beer tourism from The Beer Professor
  • What motivates beer tourists to travel and spend
  • Beer tourism at the brewery (tap rooms, restaurants, hotels, and more)
  • Beer events and why these are major tourism draws
  • Beer tour operators and how they facilitate beer tourism
  • Successful strategies in promotion of beer tourism from a DMO perspective
  • Education in and tasting of beer styles

How to Register

Registration for the Beer Tourism Certificate Course is open to anyone 21 years of age and older and costs $195. You do not need to be registered for the entire conference, but we think you will find it useful. Registration for the Beer Marketing & Tourism Conference costs from $395 to $495 depending on when you register and you can include this Certificate Course. You can also register for the course separately.

DMOs Are All In On Beer Tourism – Visit Anaheim Example

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Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) are starting to go all in on promoting beer tourism.

Naturally, DMOs love the idea of another reason to draw visitors to their country, state, region, or city. Attracting local visitors is the goal of most DMOs and beer tourism provides them another tool in their toolbox, one that (unlike wine tourism) is not limited to certain regions.

Visit Anaheim, which represents the city located in California, took this to a new level by commissioning a national study of beer drinkers to ask about beer tourism.  This study received a lot of press coverage, including by media such as the New York Post.

What’s more, Visit Anaheim produces a short, classy video that summarized the study findings:

What we find interesting about this is the decision by Visit Anaheim to invest dollars into a study of national beer tourism and in a video promoting the results. Anaheim already has the largest convention center on the west coast and is home to Disney World. But the DMO sees enough potential in beer tourism to invest in this study.

I spoke to Charles Harris, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Visit Anaheim, to understand their motivation a bit more.

Harris explained that Anaheim, like every other city in the country, has “latched on to beer tourism” as another way to drive visitors to the area. While they already get 24 million visitors a year, they do believe that beer tourism has the potential to draw new people.

But more than that, Harris explained, “we want visitors to Anaheim to experience the entire destination”. In other words, someone who comes to the city for a conference might visit a brewery on a free night, especially if they know about the brewery options in advance.

Not every DMO is going to invest in beer tourism. But if a DMO has not featured local breweries on its website and is not promoting them on social media, it is missing out.

Beer Tourism – and Articles About It – On the Rise

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Everyone in the beer industry knows that beer tourism is on the rise. Breweries are profiting from it, communities are promoting it, and tourists are engaging in it.

At Zephyr Conferences we also pay attention to the media that covers beer tourism. We have seen an increasing number of articles mentioning this aspect of the travel industry.

On August 27, journalist Angie Giroux wrote an article on the rise of beer tourism. Also increasingly common is that we at Zephyr Conferences were contacted for background information and quotes.

“Beer tourism is definitely a new phenomenon,” says Allan Wright, owner of Taste Vacations and organizer of the annual Beer Marketing & Tourism Conference. “Compared to wine tourism, which has been established for many decades, traveling for beer has really only become popular in the last five years or so.”

“There are many aspects to beer tourism. On a basic level, beer tourism can simply mean going out of one’s way to visit a local brewery when traveling for work or pleasure,” Wright says. “Slightly more complex is to actually plan a vacation to a city or region known for its beer, such as Asheville, N.C., or Belgium, and incorporate brewery visits into your travels.”

“When a brewery is positioned in a non-tourist location, such as a closed-after-hours business district or an area in need of economic revitalization, beer tourism can positively effect an entire community,” Wright says. “Most breweries in the United States are small and reliant on tap room sales; beer tourism can provide a huge impact on a brewery’s bottom line.”

For more on beer tourism, please consider attending the fourth annual Beer Marketing & Tourism Conference this February 4 – 6 in St. Petersburg, Florida!

The Entrepreneur Behind Zephyr Conferences

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I was recently interviewed by Leisure Group Travel magazine about starting and running Zephyr Adventures and Zephyr Conferences. Zephyr Adventures started as the world’s first inline skating tour company 22 years ago and now includes the five conferences we run here at Zephyr Conferences.

With 22 years of experience, I have some insights into starting a small company doing something you love to do. Here is the start of the article.

What Prompted You To Get Into The Travel Industry?

I was living in Europe and had traveled to dozens of countries, but I had done all of that on my own with a backpack, passport and a Let’s Go book. For the first time I had a job that gave me more money than time and I switched over on that continuum and took a bicycle tour in France. This was not something I thought I’d want to do, but I was wrong. It was very fun. I had a great time. I loved the activity, I loved the camaraderie and got to love the country, food and the wine. I had no idea that there was this business of “group tours,” so that opened my eyes.

Read the whole article at Leisure Group Travel.

Is Influencer Marketing Worth the Time and Effort?

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Is it worth your time and effort to engage in influencer marketing? Especially “micro influencer” marketing?

In November we outlined Why and How to Engage in Influencer Marketing. Here we will talk about the potential payoff.

There is no question that engaging with micro influencers takes more time. Putting all your eggs in one or a few baskets (major media personalities or publications) can reduce your time investment. But as we outlined, it might not produce exposure to the targeted, engaged audiences micro influencers can provide. And so while working with multiple, smaller influencers takes more time and effort, we think it is worth the money.

We’d like to offer our 2019 International Food Blogger Conference as an example. We did an analysis of 20 of the more successful food bloggers signed up for this year’s conference. The 20, on average, have:

  • 8,568 Twitter followers
  • 29,124 Instagram followers
  • 32,978 Pinterest followers
  • 125,424 Facebook followers

This gives a grand total of 196,094 followers per blogger or 3,921,880 in total. That does not include other platforms such as YouTube or the tens of thousands of unique website visitors these blogs receive each month.

In our opinion this is pretty dang impressive considering 1) most of these folks are blogging and using social media only part time and 2) the consuming public has an awful lot of choices for consumption of media. Bravo, food bloggers.

We think this also shows that working with even one food influencer can provide significant exposure, especially at reaching consumers who actually care about what these influencers have to say. This is even more true if you do your homework to work with influencers whose subject matter corresponds well with your brand.

And if you choose to attend and sponsor one of our influencer conferences, you can meet multiple influencers in one weekend!

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