Case Study: San Diego Bay Wine and Food Festival

San Diego Bay Wine and Food Festival

The San Diego Bay Wine + Food Festival is one of the nation’s largest culinary events and draws more than 10,000 attendees who stay and spend while in the City of San Diego. Featuring a week full of events, the Festival puts a national spotlight on the city's growing culinary tourism industry and culminates in a Grand Tasting held at Embarcadero Park North. In the past few years, the Festival has expanded to also include a three-day educational conference for wine professionals called SommCon. With $74,000 in funding from SDTMD in FY19, SDBWFF was able to expand its multi-phased year-round marketing program to attract more out of town visitors to the event. The event succeeded in generating more than $1 million in room night revenue for a return on investment of 14.7:1

Key Highlights FY19:

• SommCon attracted an additional 1,000 affluent, professional attendees to the event.
• Approximately 36 percent of attendees came from outside of San Diego
• The Festival takes place across the City with more than 50 featured events ranging from downtown and Little Italy to Mission Valley and the beach communities.