Dominik Brun was born in Switzerland and studied economics in Zurich. He founded a successful import company with Greek wines and delicacies in Switzerland. At this time, he started to organize the first wine tours with his Swiss clients in Greece. In 2015 he sold the company and moved to Greece. He is responsible for the strategic planning and the sales of “Venikos”.

Nikos Bouzinelos is the co-founder of the company “Venikos”. He was born in Nemea where he lives the last 18 years after his studies at the Agricultural University of Athens. He is also co-founder of the company “Wisdom of Nature” a local unit that produces organic grape products the last ten years. He believes that organic farming and the emergence of indigenous varieties can be the ideal driver for growth of the Greek agricultural production.

Both Dominik and Nikos will joint present a talk titled:

Building up a wine tourism destination – the example of Nemea, Greece (Branding & Marketing)>>

On the example of Nemea, the biggest wine region of Greece, we explain what it needs to re brand a wine region into a wine tourism destination. We show, based on the experiences that we made until now with our company Venikos what one has to consider from the beginning to build up successfully a new Grape Escape destination.

This talk will focus on our work. What were the basic steps we took, what difficulties arose and how we solved them? We show the importance of taking the initiative and of building a network of people sharing a common philosophy. We explain how on this ground, synergies arise and the network can be slowly expanded. The base for a successful wine tourism destination are the wineries. We analyze what investments must be made by the wineries and then by the gastronomy and the hotel businesses in order to increase the winet ourism activities.
We will show how we developed a country with tourism and a wine region into a high quality wine tourism destination.