01
A place on a dated tour
Finite seats on a specific departure, nothing to post, and it must sell out on its own rather than overbooking a minibus. Each date carries its own stock and shows what is left against that date.
One basket for tours, tastings and bottles
A vineyard sells four things that behave completely differently: a place on a dated tour, a case that ships by weight, a subscription that recurs, and a voucher with nothing to post. Most sites give up and run two systems side by side, then pay a percentage of every booking for the privilege. They do not have to.
- WooCommerce builds from £4,500
- No per-booking commission
- One wine tourism operator built
- Tours, tastings, bottles, vouchers
What I have actually done in this sector
One wine tourism operator in East Sussex. Guided vineyard tours sold per person on specific departure dates, tasting evenings, food and wine pairing dinners, corporate and private bespoke tours, a shop selling English sparkling and still wine from named local growers, hampers, gift vouchers, case subscriptions, and a paid annual membership that discounts the rest.
All of it through one checkout and one admin screen. That is one client, not a portfolio of wineries, and the business changed hands in 2025 so I describe it as a build rather than a current relationship. I was the developer on it during four years at a web studio in East Sussex. The mechanism is the same for a cellar door, a brewery tap or a distillery.
The four things one basket has to hold
This is the whole problem. Each of these wants different rules for stock, delivery and renewal, and a customer expects to buy any combination of them in a single transaction.
02
A bottle or a case
Heavy, fragile, and priced to ship in weight bands by destination. Get the banding wrong and you either lose money on every case or quote absurd postage on a single bottle.
03
A recurring subscription
Charges again next month whether anyone visits the site or not, needs its own delivery cadence, and must be cancellable without an email exchange.
04
A gift voucher
Nothing to pick, nothing to pack, nothing to post, and it must never be charged for delivery. The simplest of the four and the one most shops get wrong.
What usually goes wrong
Two systems, two carts, two logins
A ticketing tool bolted alongside a shop. The customer cannot buy a tasting and two bottles in one go, and you reconcile the two by hand on a Sunday night.
A percentage of every booking
Fine at low volume, expensive once the weekend tours sell out. A few per cent per ticket is a running cost that grows precisely as the business succeeds.
Dates as a text field
A form that emails you a requested date is not a booking system. It cannot sell out, cannot count remaining places, and puts the double-booking risk on whoever reads the inbox.
One flat postage rate
Charged on a gift voucher, charged on a tour place, and nowhere near covering a case of six. Every order is either overcharged or subsidised.
The shop and the experience look like different businesses
A tour is the highest-value thing on the site and often the worst presented, because the ticketing tool decides how it looks and it was not designed for you.
Nothing that rewards coming back
Tastings and tours are repeat purchases from people who live nearby. Without a membership or a reason to return, every sale starts from scratch.
On booking platforms
The booking engines are good software and I am not going to pretend otherwise. If you sell tours and nothing else, one of them is probably the right answer and cheaper than hiring me. The argument changes when you also sell bottles, because then you are running two systems that do not know about each other, and the commission is charged on the half of the business that grows fastest.
A few per cent per ticket is invisible in the first season and material once the weekend departures sell out. Selling through your own checkout means the only fee is your payment processor’s. That is the financial case. The operational case is that one admin screen shows you a tour place and a case of six in the same order list.
Why a Sussex developer
Because this is where the English wine industry is. Sussex and Kent are the centre of it, the tours I built ran from Eastbourne to vineyards half an hour up the road, and the shop sold from growers whose names I had to spell correctly. That is not positioning, it is just where I happen to live and work.
The specialists who genuinely understand winery e-commerce are mostly American and build on a US direct-to-consumer platform. Excellent at what they do, and not much use to a vineyard in Kent running WordPress with a shop already attached.
What to read next
The shop side is a WooCommerce build, which is where the postage banding and subscription work lives. Every figure is on pricing. If a catalogue is large enough that browsing speed becomes the problem, start with Core Web Vitals, and the other sectors I have built for are listed together.
Questions people actually ask
Can one website sell both tour tickets and bottles?
Yes, and doing it in one basket rather than two systems is the whole job. A tour place is a dated thing with a finite number of seats and nothing to post. A case of wine is heavy and ships in bands. A subscription recurs. A gift voucher needs no fulfilment at all. Those four want different rules, and the work is making them share one checkout so a customer buys a tasting and two bottles in one go.
Will I be charged a percentage of every booking?
Not on a site I build. The booking platforms take a cut per ticket, typically a few per cent, which is fine at low volume and expensive once a tour sells out every weekend. Selling through your own checkout means the fee is your payment processor's and nothing else. That is the main financial argument for doing it this way.
Can a tour date sell out properly?
It has to, or you double-book a minibus. Each departure date holds its own stock, so the date sells out on its own and the remaining places show against it. That is the difference between a booking system and a form that emails you a date request.
What about postage on wine?
Banded by weight and destination, with a separate class so a tour place is never charged delivery and a gift voucher is never charged at all. Getting this wrong is how a shop either loses money on every case or quotes £15 postage on a voucher.
Do you do the age verification?
I build the gate and the terms into the purchase path. I am not your compliance adviser on licensing, and if you sell into other countries the duty and shipping rules are a specialist's job, not mine.
How many vineyards have you built for?
One, and it is a wine tourism operator rather than a producer: guided vineyard tours, tasting evenings, a shop selling English sparkling from named local growers, subscriptions, hampers and a paid membership. The mechanism is the same for a cellar door, a brewery tap or a distillery. I am not going to claim a portfolio of wineries I do not have.
Why would a Sussex developer understand this?
Because this is where the English wine industry is. Sussex and Kent are the centre of it, and the tours I built run from Eastbourne to vineyards half an hour away. That is not a marketing line, it is just where I live.
Tell me what you sell, not what your website looks like.
Get a quote in four questions
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