Stories from the Field: Exploring Wine Tourism Using the Canvas

Flourishing Business Community
Speakers Series: Stories from the Field #15

Exploring Wine Tourism Using the Canvas with Caroline Morrow

Date: Tuesday September 10

Time: 15h00 UTC – 08h00 PST, 11h00 EST, 16h00 BST, 17h00 CEST, 00h00 JST (+1 day).  To convert UTC to your timezone click here

Duration: 1 hour

Registration: Required via Eventbrite at bit.ly/SFF15-Register

For our fifteenth monthly flourishing business community speaker series: stories from the field, the community is delighted to welcome Caroline Morrow who was a student in the EU’s WINTOUR Erasmus+ Programme, while working at Bannikin.

Caroline is an experienced tourism professional who has put her research and engagement skills towards 45+ projects for destinations around the world. She recently completed an International Master in Wine Tourism Innovation. Through this program, she undertook thesis research in collaboration with Bannikin, a Canadian tourism consultancy, that involved case study research with three European wineries exploring the application of flourishing business modeling tools. Caroline also holds a Masters in Urban & Regional Planning and a Bachelors in International Development Studies.

WINTOUR (International Masters in Wine Tourism Innovation, now International Master on Wine Tourism Transitions and Innovations) is a Masters program jointly run through the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Spain), Université de Bordeaux (France), and Universidade do Porto (Portugal). Students spend one semester at each university and enjoy several placements at wine tourism businesses across the 2-year programme.

Bannikin is a purposeful company delivering professional services to client-partners within and beyond travel and tourism. Bannikin specializes in research, strategy, and development as well as strategic communications. The Bannikin team co-creates value with client-partners around the world including businesses, various levels of government, industry associations, and not-for-profit organizations.

Sitting at the intersection of the agricultural, production, and tourism industries, wineries can contribute to sustainable development in diverse ways. However, frameworks for understanding sustainable wine tourism are limited and there are few resources available to winery managers looking to strategically integrate sustainability into tourism enterprises. 

In Spring 2023, Bannikin, a Canadian tourism consultancy, and Antony Upward, the originator of the Flourishing Enterprise Strategy Design Method and the Flourishing Business Canvas, collaborated with the Tourism Industry Association of Canada and the Indigenous Tourism Industry Association of Canada to test and refine sustainable business planning tools and methodologies for the tourism industry in a pilot project called Flourishing Business Strategy for Tourism (FBST). 

Caroline’s masters thesis applied the business planning tools and methodologies developed as part of the FBST project to understand how they can be applied to wine tourism businesses. The methodological approach for this project involved a literature review, resource scan using key search terms, business planning and visioning sessions with three case study wineries in France, Spain, and Portugal, a post-session participant questionnaire, and facilitator reflection exercises. 

This research project resulted in recommended adaptations to Bannikin’s next iteration of the FBST project and a reference sustainable business model canvas for wineries. The business planning tools and methodologies developed through the FBST project, and refined through this thesis, will be used by Bannikin and partners in Canada and internationally to grow sustainability in the tourism industry. 

In her talk Caroline will highlight:

• What was the objective of using the Flourishing Business Strategy for Tourism tools and methodologies with the wineries?  (What was more difficult before these existed?)
• How to design useful sessions for busy business owners and operators
• Reactions of winery owners and operators to the Flourishing Business Strategy for Tourism tools and methodologies
• Challenges/opportunities of applying the canvas to business planning for wineries (agriculture, production, tourism)
• The reference business model for sustainable wineries
• Lessons for future engagements
• What does Caroline hope to gain from participating in the Flourishing Business Community?
• What can Caroline offer to the community?

At the end of her talk Caroline will take questions from members of the community.

After the event, a video of the talk plus slides will be shared in the “Speaker Series” space of the Flourishing Business Community. Please join other flourishing business leaders and become a full member to access.