The 10th Wine Tourism Conference arrives in Stellenbosch this May with a sharper focus than ever — moving the conversation from inspiration to investment, and from isolated excellence to globally competitive wine destinations
Cape Town, South Africa (Tourism Reporter) — When the first Wine Tourism Conference gathered in South Africa a decade ago, the ambitions were clear but the framework was still forming. Wine tourism was largely treated as an add-on — a pleasant footnote to the serious business of making and selling wine. A tasting room here, a cellar door there. Ten years on, the conversation has shifted so decisively that this May’s conference carries a theme that would have seemed aspirational at that inaugural gathering: The Future of Wine Destinations: How Wine Tourism Competes, Connects and Endures.
The 10th Annual Wine Tourism Conference (WTC) takes place from 19 to 21 May 2026 at Cavalli Estate in Stellenbosch, and by any measure, it arrives at a moment of genuine consequence for South Africa’s wine sector. The numbers alone tell a compelling story. Research by South Africa Wine shows that in 2022, wine tourism generated R9.3 billion for the national GDP, contributed over 17% of total winery turnover, and supported up to 40,000 jobs depending on the season. Domestic visitors accounted for 58% of all Cape Winelands room nights in 2024 — a statistic that underlines just how central the home market has become to the sector’s resilience. And six South African estates have now secured places in the 2025 World’s 50 Best Vineyards rankings, confirming that the Cape Winelands is no longer competing to be taken seriously on the global stage. It already is.
“We have always known we have great wine,” Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen said following those rankings, “and this exceptional performance, with six of our winery estates securing places amongst the world’s best, is a resounding endorsement of our wine tourism’s consistent standards and innovation.”
Against that backdrop, WTC 2026 is not a conference content to trade in congratulations. Its ambition — as reflected in every element of the programme — is to reckon honestly with what comes next.
A Landmark Venue for a Landmark Edition
There is a certain aptness to the choice of Cavalli Estate as the setting for the conference’s tenth edition. Situated in the prestigious Helderberg region of Stellenbosch and spanning 100 hectares of prime land, Cavalli is itself a case study in what modern wine tourism looks like when vision meets execution.
The estate encompasses 26 hectares of vineyards, 10 hectares of indigenous fynbos gardens, an award-winning restaurant, a 350-seat function venue, a contemporary art gallery, a luxury boutique, and a world-class equestrian facility. As the home of South Africa’s first Green Star-rated restaurant, Cavalli has carved out a reputation as a comprehensive destination brand rather than simply a wine producer—precisely the kind of evolution that this year’s conference urges the broader industry to consider.
The views from Cavalli’s tasting terrace are as persuasive as any keynote address: a 180-degree sweep of vineyards, fragrant fynbos, and the sun-lit peaks of the Helderberg mountains. It is a setting that makes the case for wine tourism viscerally, before a single session has even begun.
From Trends to Decisions
What distinguishes WTC 2026 from many industry gatherings is its deliberate pivot away from the abstract. Conference Director Hans Belz has been emphatic on this point. “Wine tourism is built on connection — between people, places and stories,” he says. “At WTC 2026, we are bringing together leading voices in the industry to exchange ideas, cultivate meaningful partnerships, and refine the experiences that define world-class wine destinations. We look forward to welcoming delegates to Stellenbosch for an inspiring and enriching few days.”
But Belz and his team are equally clear that inspiration, on its own, is no longer sufficient. The 2026 programme is designed around decision-making, investment and execution — equipping estate owners, investors and destination leaders with the insight, frameworks and case studies needed to future-proof their operations in a rapidly changing global market. The speakers are not there simply to describe trends. They are there because they are the people driving measurable growth in the sector.
This shift in register reflects a broader maturation in the sector’s self-understanding. Wine tourism is no longer a niche activity or a supplementary revenue stream. It is, as the conference’s organisers put it, a strategic economic driver and a long-term asset class. The question facing delegates in Stellenbosch this May is not whether wine tourism matters — the data has settled that — but how to compete, invest and build for longevity.
Two Days, Two Distinct Conversations
The conference programme is structured around two thematic days, each addressing a unique dimension of the wine tourism challenge.
Day One — Designing Demand and Desire This day focuses on the “front end” of value creation: understanding the modern wine tourism guest and designing experiences that inspire visitation, loyalty, and advocacy. The themes are deliberately wide-ranging, reflecting the reality that wine estates today compete not only with one another but with the entire global leisure economy. Sessions will explore the evolving expectations of the international traveller, the challenge of competing in an experience economy that extends well beyond the cellar door, and the role of architecture, wellness, storytelling, and place-making in creating a genuine sense of place. Critically, the programme grapples with the central commercial tension of the moment: how to monetise experiences without diluting the authenticity that made them valuable in the first place.
For many estates, this is the definitive strategic hurdle. High-value international travellers are sophisticated and acutely sensitive to anything that feels contrived. The estates currently leading the market are those that have found ways to make commercial success feel like a natural by-product of genuine hospitality. How these estates have achieved this, and what others can learn from them, sits at the heart of the Day One agenda.
Day Two — Designing for Endurance The second day turns to the “back end”: the operational and financial realities that determine whether wine tourism projects thrive or fail over time. The themes here are demanding. Regenerative sustainability enters the conversation not as a marketing concept, but as a strategic imperative—the difference between estates that will remain viable in twenty years and those that will not.
Energy, water, labour, and accountability are all on the table, alongside the financing structures—private capital, development finance, and public-private partnerships—that underpin the sector’s growth. What do investors actually look for in a wine tourism project? How do you structure a development for bankability? How do you measure impact without “greenwashing”? These are the questions estate owners and managers face in boardrooms, and they will be addressed directly in Stellenbosch. Day Two concludes by looking toward the horizon, exploring the technology, ownership transitions, and operating models that will define the industry a decade from now.
The Speakers Shaping the Sector
The speaker line-up for WTC 2026 reflects both the South African industry’s depth of talent and its growing confidence in engaging with global expertise. Delegates will hear from Damien Joubert-Winn of Delaire Graff Estate — one of the South African properties recognized in the 2025 World’s 50 Best Vineyards lists — alongside Andrew Kamphuis from Commerce7, Carolyn Martin of Creation Wines, Mike Ratcliffe of Vilafonté Vineyards and Wine Business Advisors, Annebelle Schreuders from Spier Wine Farm Hospitality, and Desry Lesele from Nedbank Commercial Banking, amongst others.
The presence of Nedbank on the programme — through both Lesele and Nedbank’s Commercial Banking arm — signals the conference’s seriousness about financing. South Africa’s wine tourism sector has historically struggled with the gap between ambitious vision and available capital; bringing banking expertise into the room alongside estate owners and destination leaders is a practical acknowledgement that conversations about growth cannot happen in isolation from those about investment.
The inclusion of Commerce7’s Andrew Kamphuis reflects a different kind of ambition. Commerce7 is a direct-to-consumer platform built specifically for the wine industry, and Kamphuis’s presence at the conference signals the extent to which technology and data-driven commercial thinking have become central to wine tourism strategy — not peripheral to it.
The Wine Experience Day
The conference concludes on 21 May with what organisers are calling the Wine Experience Day — a departure from the formal conference format that sees small, intimate groups of delegates engage directly with senior leadership at a curated selection of top-performing estates. It is, in many ways, the conference’s own case study: an argument, made through direct experience, for the kind of thoughtful, access-driven wine tourism that generates not only revenue but long-term loyalty and advocacy.
For international delegates in particular, the Wine Experience Day offers something that no conference session can fully replicate — the texture of the Cape Winelands at close quarters, filtered through the perspectives of the people who have dedicated their working lives to it.
The Wider Context: A Sector at Inflection Point
To understand why WTC 2026 feels particularly charged, it helps to consider the state of the South African wine sector more broadly. The industry has weathered significant headwinds in recent years — load-shedding, water stress, labour challenges, the lingering effects of Covid-19 restrictions on tourism, and the broader pressures of a global economic environment that has made consumer spending more cautious and more considered. The 2025 harvest, by most accounts a technically excellent vintage, was nonetheless characterised by difficult growing conditions, including heat spikes and uneven rainfall.
And yet the mood within the industry is, by most accounts, one of cautious confidence. South Africa produces approximately 4% of the world’s wine and was ranked the seventh-largest wine producer globally in 2024. The Cape Winelands has been on UNESCO’s tentative world heritage list since 2008, a designation that, if confirmed, would be transformative for the region’s global profile. The United Nations World Tourism Organization has placed South Africa alongside California’s Napa Valley as one of only two primary wine tourism destinations on the planet — a recognition that still surprises many in the industry itself.
The domestic market, as the data consistently shows, remains the sector’s bedrock. Western Cape residents are frequent and loyal visitors to the region’s estates, with 61% having visited more than five times. Day trips dominate the pattern, with restaurants, farm stalls and family-friendly activities proving to be the real draw alongside the wine itself. This local foundation gives South African wine tourism a resilience that destinations wholly dependent on international arrivals simply do not have.
But the international dimension is increasingly important. Six South African estates in the top 100 of the World’s 50 Best Vineyards — including Klein Constantia and Creation Wines in the global top 10 — represent a level of international recognition that was barely imaginable a decade ago. Tokara Wine and Olive Estate and Delaire Graff Estate both appear in the rankings, as do La Motte Wine Estate and Hamilton Russell Vineyards. South Africa’s wine tourism offering is no longer making the case for itself. It is being affirmed by others.
Positioning Wine Tourism as a Strategic Asset
Perhaps the most significant conceptual shift that WTC 2026 represents is the explicit positioning of wine tourism not as a support activity for the wine business but as a strategic asset class in its own right. This framing — borrowed from the language of investment rather than hospitality — carries real implications for how estates, investors and government think about the sector.
If wine tourism is an asset class, then the questions that matter are not simply about experience design and visitor satisfaction, but about long-term value creation, capital allocation, risk management and return on investment. It means that the financing conversations that have historically felt like the unglamorous counterpart to the creative conversations about guest experience are, in fact, the same conversation viewed from a different angle.
It also means that South Africa’s wine sector needs to be able to articulate its proposition in terms that are legible to the capital markets — to the private equity investors, development finance institutions and blended finance vehicles that might otherwise deploy their capital elsewhere. This is not a conversation the industry has always been comfortable having. WTC 2026 is designed to change that.
A Decade of Growth, A Decade of Purpose
Looking back at the decade since the Wine Tourism Conference was first convened, the distance travelled is striking. South Africa Wine’s research tells the story in numbers — R9.3 billion in GDP contribution, more than 17% of total winery turnover, up to 40,000 jobs. But the more important shift has been qualitative: a change in how the industry understands itself, its role, and its potential.
Wine tourism in South Africa is no longer an aspiration. It is a demonstrated economic force, a job creator, a cultural asset and — increasingly — a globally recognised quality destination. The challenge for WTC 2026 is to take that foundation and build something that endures: estates that can attract and retain the best talent, finance the experiences that guests will remember, compete with the world’s finest wine destinations, and remain viable through the pressures — climatic, economic, political — that the next decade will inevitably bring.
“The Future of Wine Destinations explores how wine tourism can compete in the experience economy, connect meaningfully with guests and communities, and endure in a rapidly changing world,” the conference’s organisers state. The language is measured, but the ambition is considerable.
Worth the Journey
For anyone with a serious stake in the future of wine tourism — whether as an estate owner, a destination marketer, an investor, a designer or a hospitality operator — Stellenbosch in May is where the most consequential conversations in the sector will be happening. The Wine Tourism Conference has spent a decade earning the right to make that claim. Its tenth edition suggests it has no intention of resting on it.
The gathering draws together a deliberately broad church: wine estate executives and general managers sitting alongside tourism boards and destination marketing organisations, investors and lenders comparing notes with architects and experience creators, sustainability strategists in dialogue with financiers. That breadth is not incidental — it reflects the conference’s core conviction that wine tourism’s challenges cannot be solved in silos, and that the sector’s next decade will be shaped by those willing to think beyond their own corner of the industry.
South Africa’s Cape Winelands have long been one of the world’s most naturally gifted wine tourism landscapes. What WTC 2026 is asking — with urgency, with rigour, and with the accumulated insight of ten years — is whether the industry is ready to match that natural advantage with the strategic discipline, the investment frameworks and the collaborative ambition it deserves. If the quality of the programme and the calibre of the speakers are any indication, the answer being assembled in Stellenbosch this May will be worth hearing.
The 10th Wine Tourism Conference takes place from 19 to 21 May 2026 at Cavalli Estate in the Helderberg region of Stellenbosch. Further information on the programme is available at winetourism.co.za.
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