Elena Pilo
Director of Wine Tourism and Public Relations
Bodegas Franco-Españolas
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“Data is the gold of the 21st century”
The ‘Summer Cinema’ cycle of Bodegas Franco-Españolas ends its ninth edition, an opportunity that has managed to unite, once again, wine and culture on the same stage. More than 1,400 attendees have been able to enjoy the movie nights, with great hits such as ‘Red Telephone’, ‘Belle Époque’ or ‘The Big Lebowski’.
“For us, this initiative means recovering a classic of Spanish summers”, highlights Elena Pilo, director of Wine Tourism and Public Relations at Bodegas Franco-Españolas. “We have managed to contemporize the popular cinema of yesteryear and bring glamour through our Bordón and Diamante wines and gastronomic service”, she explains.
Without losing sight of the respect for traditional values such as tradition and family, Bodegas Franco-Españolas continues to bet on technological innovation, adding the gastrobar tool to its wine tourism events. “We developed it, together with our technological partner JIG, in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis in order to respond to the health restrictions”, Pilo points out.
“The tourism sector is terribly sensitive and we needed to adapt to this new reality in an agile way”, he says. “The use of the tool was an unquestionable success: it facilitated the viability of the cultural agenda at a very complex time and allowed us to continue integrating wine into our experiences, streamlining the service and avoiding waits”, she says.
Currently, this tool, together with the wine tourism reservation management platform, continues to be one of the most important elements of events such as the ‘Summer Cinema’ series, allowing us to provide a service for more than 400 people in an average of 3.5 minutes per order. Its application reduces errors in orders and facilitates decision making based on data and consumption moments, thus reducing resources and improving the economic efficiency of the activity. During the film sessions in July, Bodegas Franco-Españolas recorded around 600 orders placed through the gastrobar tool, uncorking a total of 550 bottles of Bordón and Diamante wine and managing to donate an amount of 1,000 euros to the Food Bank of La Rioja.
The winery started making culture in 2012, being a pioneer in its offer and maintaining a broad and continuity agenda, focused, at all times, on the diversity of experiences. A tourist activity that considers visitor information an indispensable factor for its development. “Data is the gold of the 21st century”, assures Pilo.
“We believe that tourism has a triple return for the wine business: economic, image and brand positioning and the generation of enriched data”, he continues. “This information allows us to map customer behavior and understand what kind of communication we want to have with them and the pace they need”, summarizes the director of Enoturismo.
These digital solutions have increased the winery’s tourism sales by 34 percent. “Today we sell 85 percent of our tourism services through the online channel”, says Pilo. Its implementation offers freedom to the consumer, facilitating access to services and favoring conversion. “The customer is not forced to call or wait in queues and we can work predictively”, she reports.
The manager highlights the need to work collaboratively with other companies as a window of opportunity to continue participating in the development and updating of the sector. “Maintaining the level of competitiveness is everyone’s responsibility”, says the director of Wine Tourism and Public Relations at Bodegas Franco-Españolas.