Hunter Valley Wine & Tourism
ELEVATE Program
Throughout Febraury and March in 2023, we were thrilled to head up to the glorious Wonnarua Country (Hunter Valley) to work with the Hunter Valley Wine & Tourism Association to deliver a mentoring program for their members.
The focus of the 'Elevate' program was to inspire the operators to better align their experiences to future demand, and to lift the visibility of experiences in the Region to help achieve the destination’s marketing activations.
Paige, Rebecca and Jaclyn were an absolute pleasure to work with, and went out of their way to ensure that our program was suited to the needs of our region and tourism operators.
We engaged the team at The Tourism Collective to create a bespoke tourism mentoring program for our members, specifically designed to target the areas that our tourism operators felt were the most needed. As a destination that relies heavily on tourism, the program was a way for our members to gain an insight into how to enable their small businesses to become more resilient and future-focused, creating experiences that will evolve with the ever-changing tourism landscape, and best practice collaboration with neighbouring businesses. Paige, Rebecca and Jaclyn were an absolute pleasure to work with, and are clearly passionate about what they do, and experienced in their individual fields, which made the experience of our participants a positive one.
Program Methodology
Learning Modules
The Program is delivered as a learning 'journey' where each module builds on the last. Four Modules were delivered, covering the following learning areas:
Program Facilitation
This Program was facilitated as a layered combination of methodologies. These methodologies were deliberately chosen based on the geographic size of the region, the time-pressures for operators to make live content screenings, and to enable time for group mentoring and individual bespoke mentoring.
- Module 1 and 4 were delivered as a Workshop in region, and as pre-recorded webinars.
- Module 2 and 3 were delivered as live webinars, which were also recorded
- Participants were invited to attend two group mentoring Zoom Sessions to debrief on the learning material covered in the Program. These sessions were a useful space for participants to ask more questions, and also to network and brainstorm solutions together.
Learning Materials
- Bespoke learning materials (workbooks, templates) were created and supplied to support the key learnings. Each topic consisted of a set of Tasks, which were practical actions that each business could implement straight away
- All learning materials were made available in our secure member portal for participants within 24 hours after each module.
- Australian tourism business case studies (and local case studies) were used throughout the webinars, making the learning materials as relevant as possible for the participants
^ Paige & Rebecca with the ELEVATE Program participants
The Tourism Collective team helped us achieve short and long term goals for our individual businesses and for our destination as a whole.
'Elevate' the professional development tourism program which was offered through the Hunter Valley Wine & Tourism Association to its members provided Tulloch Wines with tools and case studies to assist us to elevate our own wine tasting experiences with a focus on sustainability and inclusiveness. There is growing evidence that consumers are expecting tourism businesses to commit and demonstrate their credentials in these areas and The Tourism Collective team through the different workshops helped us to see how we can achieve short and long term goals for our individual businesses and for our destination as a whole.
Highly recommended - thank you!
We recently took part in the Hunter Valley "Elevate" program and really exceeded all expectations. The Tourism Collective is a professionally run business with a great team that all bring their own expertise to the table, that presented a range of engaging and relevant content suited to new and established businesses. Highly recommended - thank you!
Through the Tourism Collective teachings, we were able to harness the power of collaboration and join with two neighbouring wineries, Glandore and Oakvale, to create the first moveable feast for wine and food lovers!
It was a fantastic event where 95% of participants said that they would love to join us again. We will be making it an annual event, growing bigger and better each year!