Alioscia Lombardini, Wine & Food Tours, Siena

Italians do it better? Recently, we visited the Veneto region and we found the wine tourism market is much the same as Spain. Turn up at a winery and it’s closed or come back mañana. Phoning up before hand is clearly the only way to get see and taste what you want and once you are in you get the passion and the story from the winemaker.

Alioscia Lombardini, based in the Tuscany region of Italy and owner of Siena Holiday, a tour operator and travel agency within the Movimento Turismo del Vino – a place for the wine tourist to get information on which wineries to visit, where to stay and where to eat. Alioscia is the President of this wine tourism initiative.

On Tuesday 2nd February 2010 in a plenary session Alioscia will be delivering a talk titled

“Movimento Turismo del Vino”, the Italian Experience”

In his abstract he says: “Wine making up until recently has always been considered as a kind of magic. In Italy, in 1993, a wine maker had the idea of opening his cellar to the people, not by herself, but by creating an event to advertise all over Italy and for as many cellars as possible. After 16 years, every last Sunday of May, of “Cantine Aperte”, about one million people visit in one day over one thousand cellars in all of Italy. But today these cellars, that have invested in the “tourism business”, are asking more than just events, and the Movimento Turismo del Vino is answering to their associates. Discover how this unique Italian history was born, grown and is developing”

History of MTV Event organized Data related to the event and association Itself Investment done by wineries for tourism. What is MTV doing, extra the events (communications, certification,..)Tourism project of MTV. This talk will be live on the Wine Pleasures Web site.

Siena Holiday will also be participating in the Wine Pleasures Wine Tourism Workshop – a place where wine tourism providers hold one to one meetings with international tour operators looking to organise trips to Italian and other Old World wine regions.