Marcus Knüppel, Head of Department, North Italy for Swiss agency Batutta Reisen, offers his clients exotic vacations all across the globe. At this year’s International Wine Tourism Workshop, Mr. Knüppel is seeking to expand his services into Italy’s renowned wine regions. We took a few moments to ask Mr. Knüppel what drew him to wine tourism and how his unique travel experience influences his perception of wine tourism.
1. What are you hoping to gain from the workshops and meetings at the International Wine Tourism Workshop?
New contacts to wine producers and local operators/foreign operators, restaurants with a focus on wine and food specialities of Umbria. The new contacts in combination with a better knowledge of the products will help us to improve our business.
2. Service-Reisen, your agency, hasn´t yet branched into wine tourism. what drew you to wine tourism? Why now?
Our focus lies on leisure and cultural groups but we are also organising package travel for clubs and societies, special arrangements also for wine tour operators. With new contacts and ideas from the educational tour we hope to increase the number of special interest groups in wine and enograstonomic travel.
3. Service-Reisen offers a variety of exotic trips across the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe. How do you plan to integrate Italian wine holidays into your portfolio?
Italy is already a big market for our company. Every year Service-Reisen sends 1300-1500 groups to Italy. We sell these trips to our clients (tour operators in Germany , Austria, Switzerland and other foreign countries). We are still organizing group travel in this market.
4. What do you think makes wine tourism extraordinary?
Wine is a piece of pleasure and life culture .
5. After the conference, you´re headed to Umbria from the 2nd to the 5th of February. Why did you choose to explore this region?
Umbria is a beautiful region to the south of Tuscany. In group tourism the demand for group trips to Umbria isn’t as high as for Tuscany and we try to evaluate new programme ideas like a combination of wine, food and culture.
Service-Reisen is the market leader for package tours in Germany. At Service-Reisen 140 professionals are working in the area of travel organisation. Our customers are coach tour operators and travel agents in Germany and neighboring countries.
Company profile: Our customers are coach companies, travel agents, community colleges, church groups and clubs, mainly from Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In 2010 we have been certified by SQ Deutschland – a leading service quality inspection authority – and have been continuously refining our selection of service providers. The result of this is the ability to work more closely and more intensively with the selected partners thus improving the working relationship on both sides.
To meet Marcus and learn more about Batutta Reisen, join the 300 other attendees at the International Wine Tourism Conference & Workshop 2012!
