Wine Tourism Product Development Strategy for Riverland region, South Australia

The Riverland region is not Australia’s largest wine producing region synonymous with Australia’s largest river, the Murray, and the verge that the Murray creates. This verge features almost linear adjacent strips of river generated wetlands, followed by viticulture and agriculture, followed by mulga and low dry woodlands. We developed ‘Riverland on the Verge’ as a wine tourism initiative designed to:

  1. Capture and share this regional brand essence among international wine tourism markets and international wine buyers
  2. Help the region become a more competitive destination for wine and agritourism tourism
  3. Increase the number of international visitors to the Riverland region
  4. Encourage people to buy more wine produced in the region

Catalytic projects scoped out included:

  1. The introduction of hot air ballooning over the Murray River verge with key agritourism properties, followed by breakfast with the birds
  2. The introduction of highly immersive nature-based accommodation
  3. Developing a virtual reality experience of a bird flying across the verge areas, and delivering this in a more experiential manner via:
  4. a frame that can horizontally support the visitor while they are having their VR experience, and that the visitor can lean into the create a sense of flying; and
  5. a fan that blows into the face of the visitor while they are having the VR experience, set to a timer so that it only operates during the aerial whistling kite sequence

Images of the frame to deliver virtual reality production of the Riverland on the verge brand

Summary of the agritourism-based Product Development Strategy

Riverland Wine