Agricultural Tours Riverina

Business profile

Agricultural Tours Riverina (ATR) is a specialist provider of tailored technical agricultural tours for small and large groups. Tours focus on the Riverina region in southern NSW, centre of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area and home to crops of rice, prunes, citrus, nuts and table wines.

ATR uses a wide network of rural industry producers, processors and researchers to provide a seamless experience for international guests to investigate Australian agriculture. Tours include accommodation, meals and ground transport and local interpreters with appropriate industry experience if required.

agriculturaltoursriverina.com.au

Quick facts

Product Type: Tour

Focus: Agritourism & Technical Tours

Location: Leeton, Riverina

Destination Network: Destination Riverina Murray

NSW First spoke to Agricultural Tours Riverina Director John Collins about why the business is involved with the program.

How did the Destination NSW New Product Workshop help your business?

Knowing agriculture is one thing but knowing how the tourism industry might approach agriculture is another. The New Product Workshop was helpful in focusing attention on promotional materials as well as making useful contacts with the travel trade that deal in technical tours.

Which international markets do you target?

Not all countries are equal when it comes to regional technical tours. Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, USA and Canada are more interested in farm tours than other markets.

What types of trade partners are you working with?

We offer bespoke tours rather than standard ‘off-the-shelf’ tours, so we have regular contact with a narrow range of travel trade partners who specialise in technical tours.

Which trade events have you attended?

We have attended the Australian Tourism Exchange (ATE) in the last few years.

How did you prepare?

The Destination NSW Seller Training was valuable and we researched the trade buyers that we met at each trade event to understand the types of clients they represented.

What do you find most valuable about attending trade events?

Even when our research indicated inbound tour operators were not selling technical agricultural tours, we learned that they would once they knew we supplied a quality product. Often they had avoided the technical tours field because they didn’t know who to contact.

It is necessary to keep putting yourself in front of travel trade buyers. They are all very busy with a wide range of tourism products and will soon forget you exist if you aren’t seen at trade events.

Which activities would you recommend when you start working with the travel trade?

• As often as possible get in front of the buyers who can bring business to you.
• Be alert to customs and trends that might affect the way your product is perceived by the travel trade.

How does attending trade events fit into your inbound strategy?

It is necessary to keep putting yourself in front of travel trade buyers. They are all very busy with a wide range of tourism products and will soon forget you exist if you aren’t seen at trade events.

What is your top tip for a business attending its first trade event?

Ensure you have a small range of hard and soft copy trade fact sheets and be prepared to follow up, repeatedly.

How do you keep the travel trade up to date with your product range?

We have tried regular electronic newsletters but find face-to-face visits are best. Each time we are in Sydney, we make sure to arrange sales visits to the inbound tour operators we work with.