Today we’d like to introduce you to Greig Santos-Buch.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Greig. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
My name’s Greig Santos-Buch and I’ve been traveling “the world through wine” for the past ten years or so. My startup company, Winetraveler (which I go into further below and launched its first version in 2014), first started out as a dream, one that I discovered while living in Austin Texas not far from the nearby and relatively unknown wine region of Texas Hill Country. I was working as an Affiliate Marketing Manager at the time, and I realized I could meld my skills in digital media while establishing connections with my clients in the travel niche to further my passion.
After a couple of years exploring the region and beginning to understand wine production and tourism more deeply, I took my interest on the road with a month-long solo trip to Spain when I was 25, planning the trip almost exclusively around the gastronomic scene of the country and visiting wine regions from North, South, East to West. Ever since that trip abroad, I’ve developed a passion for traveling and making wine tourism the core driver behind where I end up. This has since led me to both exotic and domestic destinations reaching as far as the Czech Republic, to Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, Portugal, California, Washington State, Canada and beyond. I realized, this style of travel had a broad appeal, and maybe I could help show it to the world more efficiently.
Today, Winetraveler’s primary objective is to simplify and consolidate the entire global wine tourism experience. There’s so much information out there. It can take weeks to plan a trip. Winetraveler aims to bring wine culture closer to home and help consumers visit locations more efficiently, while also helping the local economies that wine regions are centered around.
We recently hit one million monthly impressions across our website and mobile application, so we’re thrilled with this recent milestone heading into an exciting year in 2020 with many new projects and improvements in the works.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
In the beginning, I built the company as a content-focused website that steadily gained traction and social media following over the years. It progressed as a concept but was completely self-funded. It wasn’t until we raised additional funding that we were able to reach a broader audience and begin the development of new technology, a directory and a mobile application.
Any tech-endeavor of this scale can be daunting, and finding the right team members who were as passionate as me at first was difficult. We hit a number of roadblocks on the development side early on, with multiple iterations of user experience design that were deployed, scrapped, revamped, and re-deployed. This is not uncommon in the tech world but can get frustrating at times when you hit setbacks trying to build something that hasn’t been attempted before.
I would say that pinning the team down took a lot of time, and we’re still growing and trying to find the right fits in certain departments, but we now have 16 well-accredited writers, sommeliers and travel experts contributing to Winetraveler and a Technology Director who shares the same passion as I do to change travel for the better forever. We’re extremely excited to take the platform to the next level this year.
Please tell us about Winetraveler. What should we know?
Winetraveler creates an assortment of travel and tourism resources for readers and subscribers ranging from detailed travel guides and itineraries written by well-accredited writers, to generating mobile “smart itineraries” that describe exactly where to go and what to do in regions around the world. Winetraveler is providing a one-stop platform on both mobile and web that consumers can use at their leisure for free, and producers and regions are welcomed as partners to showcase what makes them unique to better attract like-minded travelers.
What I’m most proud of at this point in time is the quality of our content and the passion behind our team who contributes to it. Nowhere else on the web is there a more robust resource to get step-by-step guides to visiting certain locations, and we’re expanding to new regions every week. What sets us apart from others is that commitment to simplifying and personalizing wine travel around the world, and we’re doing it through new exciting technology-based in machine learning.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
This list could go on forever, but I’ve had a number of mentors, supporters and contributors ranging from close friends and family to Harvard Business School professors that taught me how to launch a start-up company beginning with full-day skull sessions.
I believe, as Steve Jobs did, that you could have the greatest game-changing idea in the world, but if you’re not persistent and passionate about furthering the project, it won’t be successful, no matter how solid your product is. I’ve been lucky enough to receive support from my mentors in the technology, wine and travel industries, but also from my father who has believed in the project from the beginning and encouraged me never to give up despite what roadblocks I hit.
From our writers, they’ve contributed to the development of the platform by going above and beyond to deliver in-depth travel guides giving out hidden tidbits of advice that you can’t find anywhere else. In some cases, this being done on a tight budget and working late hours and around lunch breaks with other jobs to help make us successful.
From our technology team, some of whom have other full-time jobs as well, have helped us to release the first version of our mobile application that has an extremely professional feel and simple user experience.
From my mentors, they took the time away from other projects and personal startups to spend hours on the phone and in-person to drive my path in a secure direction to ensure the company’s success.
From my industry connections and colleagues, they’ve also been great friends and taught me more about wine and inspired me to visit places I would have never dreamed of being so lucky to explore.
Contact Info:
- Address: 235 SW 7th St, Pompano Beach, FL, 33060
- Website: https://www.winetraveler.com
- Phone: 2032464661
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/winetraveler_com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/winetravelercom
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/winetravelercom
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/company/winetraveler
Image Credit:
Winetraveler, LLC.
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