Hello, all of you. Are you fine?
This September, 8 I was at Grinzane Cavour Castle, in Piedmont near Alba, where I talked about digital tools for wine tourism. I wrote about it in the last newsletter.
My talk focused on the customers and how they use web platforms to search and book the vinery they want to visit, the tools they use to arrive to their destination and the act of sharing the experience, tipically on social networks.
I translated (I hope in a comprehensible way…) the slides for you.
At this link the Italian version, at this link the English one.
What I was going to explain to audience was that when visitors, tourists, start to search a wine destination, they use the well known digital platforms for every side of their experience. They use Google Maps or Waze, Paypal, Facebook or Instagram, and their data are stored in the cloud of AWS, Google or other. They make their reservation using Booking or Expedia, or somewhat else. And all these data are not, in the hand of vineries but only of the Big Tech’s ones. And these companies use these data for new proposal, new stuff, new services. If Facebook decides that a post with a black background is no good, you have to change your photo. If Google decides to penalize posts about wine, all the job you done to stay in the first page of search engine is futile (at this point I showed the Borg’s slide….).
Freestyle Oenotourism
But there’re another way, and to explain how I had to tell a story.
In the slide you can see Gerry Kasparov, a 1963-born Master of Chess until 2000, and Deep Blue, a 1995-born IBM computer; this was the first AI to win a chess match against a human, in a 1996 tournament just with Kasparov. The human won the tournament, but in the succeeding one of 1997, Deep Blue was the winner. Why? Because IBM done a simple thing: doubled the memory size of its machine.
In the other slide you can see Kasparov while thinking the move and a guy in front of him. The only task of that man was to move the pieces according the AI orders and insert the Kasparov’s moves into a keybord. Nothing else, he was the Deep Blue’s hands.
So, Kasparov understood that against machine humans had only two choice: play against machine, and lose, or move the pieces following the will of a computer.
But, there was another way: playing with AI, and not against it.
How to do it? Kasparov created some chess’ events where human players used computer to suggest them the next N moves. In this way the couple Computer-Human (he called it ‘Centaurus’) worked as one entity, with an augmented speed in data analysis and better choices of strategy by humans.
And Centaurus couples won all tournaments against Humans only or AI only.
Don’t leave data over the table
What’s matter that with wine tourism? Well, the system has to play a Freestyle Oenotourism, where data are in the hands of vineries and not only of the Big Tech.
Get data from visitors, with a CRM or a owned booking platform, not only their email but city where they live, if they like bike or not, if they have pets or not, how many bottles of wine they bought, …. All these data are into the cloud databases of FAAMG and their friends: why don’t in vinery’s one? Some wine tech applications and platforms work with vineries and not against them, and the platform in the slides have the same sense as computers for humans in freestyle chess. Use their data, ask them how to use data they are picking, and you can do it because you speak with them, while Big Tech speak only with their customers. Many of these app and platforms, in Italy and in the rest of the digital world, have your data (I told to vineries and web agencies working with them), so ask them how to use you data to get better the visit experience and, of course, sell some more case of wine.
3 little tips
Then, I got some tips for vineries digital life: an updated web site, online maps with Points Of Interest near their cellar as museum, archeological sites, an old typical artisan shop (consider I am in Italy, near every little town here there’re these things), a place to make wonderful photos and video for content creators. And a newsletter, an old system to rest in contact with the customers and visitors, to remember they the nice day spent together. Simple things, as you see, but powerful.
Well, my speech ended here. I’m very happy that people appreciated it and I’d like to share it with you.
Tell me anything about this topic, your ideas, your critics, anything.
Thank you for reading this newsletter.