Australian Regional Tourism’s National Agritourism Forum provided inspiration from truffle, nut, seafood, dairy, sheep and pearl farmers, brewers, tour operators, and more (see who presented).

Here are some of the insights that stood out — and a few ideas you might be able to apply to your own farm.

Why add agritourism to your farm?

Agritourism is a valuable income stream that helps farmers manage the unpredictability of agriculture. Climate change (disasters as well as how it leads to new pest outbreaks), international tariffs, rising costs, and competition for land are all putting pressure on farm businesses.

Austrade’s new agritourism visitation report highlights the incredible value of agritourism: 84% of travellers worldwide are interested in agritourism experiences, and visitors who visit farms spend almost twice as much as average visitors.

In Australia, agritourism already accounts for 14% of total tourism spending and grew 10% last year! (in visitor nights).

See insights

How to develop an agritourism experience

What feels like everyday life to a farmer can be fascinating to visitors. People from across the world – and even from Australian cities – are blown away by every day life on a farm.

You can start small and build from there. Open your gates to show people what you’re already doing on the farm - this is the low-hanging fruit. Try low-cost trials before investing heavily, and don’t invest time or money without confirming feasibility using research (instead of hoping that if you build it, they will come). · You can collaborate with a university – for example, they can do market analysis or identify how you can best market your business.

Specialise at what you’re good at, what you love, and what is most profitable so you don’t burn out.

For premium experiences for luxury guests (those who spend over $1,000 per person per day), your time is probably worth a lot more than you think. Pristine nature, being alone in nature with no one else around, and personal connection are the real luxuries visitors are seeking. What you might think is five star might not be to your guests – many guests absolutely love what you think is just every day. AI can’t replicate human to human connection, so work on your stories and what matters to you. Your time and life experience are probably worth a lot more than you think.

You’ve got to have the sausage (your agritourism product) and the sizzle (your competitive advantage; what makes you unique) – tell your story!

It’s also okay not to be open year-round. The Pines dairy farm has a winter break each year – a break from milking and a break from guests – this is critical for their own wellbeing. And it builds anticipation – when they reopened for the tourism season after their first winter break, visitation trebled!

Staffing can be challenge, but collaboration can help. Could you share employees with another local business to provide full-time hours to a worker? One Council is facilitating staff-sharing.

There are some amazing opportunities in agritourism. Majura Farm attracts 27,000 visitors to their sunflower maze, each paying $5 (kids) to $10 (adults) - planting a crop for tourism yields a lot more than as a commodity! They have guests book in advance to limit guests to 300 on farm at a time (over 4 sessions per day).

Agritourism is a powerful way to educate. The Pines Dairy in Kiama, for instance, hosts school groups for students of all ages and even runs a bush kindy four days a week, while Fleurieu Milk Company uses farm visits to inspire the next generation of farmers. Visitors often leave with a new appreciation for where their food comes from — and even small discoveries (like the fact that truffles don’t actually contain oil!) can change how people think about produce.

Sustainable agritourism - don’t greenwash or greenhush

Sustainability and accessibility (including experiences in multiple languages) are key opportunities.

93% of travellers want to make more sustainable choices but they’re looking for more than green marketing — they want to see sustainability embedded in the experiences they book.

Avoid greenwashing by being transparent and sharing your real progress, backed by verifiable actions or certifications. At the same time, don’t hide your good work — greenhushing can mean missed opportunities to inspire and attract like-minded visitors.

Know your worth

One clear message from experienced operators is value your time. Agritourism should enhance your life, not exhaust it. Start with pricing that reflects the effort involved, not just what you think guests will pay. When visitors understand the labour and care that go into producing your goods, they’re often happy to pay more, and they become advocates for your produce.

Your farm needs to come first. Have respect for your time because your guests won’t - price yourself for the value of your time, and manage the time you invest in agritourism. Make sure what you are doing is enjoyable and worth it - if you are busy with kids, and off-farm jobs, and farming, agritourism has to be worth the time you give to it.

Some farmers start with a low price to attract visitors but low price customers tend to be a lot of work.

Get compliance right - it’s too expensive not to

Every constraint is an enabler. The more forces you have to overcome, the more powerful your solution will be.

Planning and compliance can be complex, but cutting corners can be really costly if you have to retrospectively fix lack of planning compliance!

Engage early with your council, meeting with both the planner and the economic development officer together (so the economic development officer can advocate for your business). Use your skills from talking with visitors when talking with planning officers – they are very busy.

Working with local tradespeople who understand council processes can also save time and frustration.

Two speakers shared conflicting advice:

As a farmer, you’re not expected to know much about planning legislation and compliance - that’s the planners’ job.
Do your homework (read the legislation or hire a planning consultant) and provide your council’s planners with solutions to make their life easy for them. If they don’t know how to approve your development, they’ll say no, and once the answer is no, it won’t change.

“Cutty’s Tours were required by legislation to have a place on land to sight their tour boat. Owner Matt thought to have a food van at a certain beach to fulfil that obligation, and the local Council wanted a food van there.

When the Council asked him what kind of food van he was thinking of, he asked them, “What kind of van would you like?”, ensuring he would get a yes. ”

Planners, don’t just say no. Don’t make no your first answer. It’s ok to not know an answer, and refer a farmer to someone else such as a planning consultant.

Branding and marketing

Building a brand is important! Ask someone from interstate or overseas what they know about your region or your state - that’s the brand that they remember.

“The retelling of a story is more valuable than a review – find stories that will go back home with your guests and get retold.”

Authentic stories drive engagement and brand loyalty – guests will align with you if their values align with yours. Make sure what guests see in marketing materials matches their experience.

When people have made a trek and experienced something hands on that is unique (that they can’t experience elsewhere – such as opening a pearl oyster), they want to take something with them and cost is not so important.

Tell your visitors about the next place in your region that they should visit – that personal recommendation is gold.

It is good to be commissionable - travel agents promote your business and smart travellers will book directly with you so you don’t have to pay commission.

Co-operation

Collaboration is key in agritourism. Working with other tourism businesses who are really good at what they do can strengthen your own offering and create a more compelling experience for visitors.

In a small, close-knit industry like ours, celebrating others’ successes and learning from what works is far more valuable than seeing them as competition.

“If someone is succeeding, call them up and congratulate them
...and ask them what’s working for them!”

Cooperation also amplifies your collective voice with government, helping shape policies that support agritourism. Finally, giving visitors a roadmap by recommending the next must-visit spot not only enriches their experience but also builds trust and creates word-of-mouth that money can’t buy.

Managing growth and community impact

The forum also tackled the realities of over-tourism. Lester from Coffin Bay Oyster Farm shared how his small coastal community is feeling the pressure from too many visitor - used loo paper from free campers blows along the beach while he takes guests on luxury tours!, there’s no parking, and litter is impacting the marine environment and his oyster farm. Attracting lower-impact, higher-value visitors helps ensure tourism remains sustainable.

Equally important is maintaining local social licence. Engage your community, show how your business contributes to and benefits the community, and make your experiences ones that locals want to share with their own visitors, and keep coming back to experience over and over themselves.

Managing farming, family life and guests

Kay from Tommerup Dairy and Agritourism Queensland shared insights about how her family incorporates agritourism in with their farming: Agritourism enables two generations to live on and from their farm.

The farm always comes first – that is the true north of our lives that we share with guests. Guests want a backstage pass to our lives – to feel the earth, and hear stories of our grit and determination, to laugh and cry about the daily life of a farmer, to feel part of our community. Being true to ourselves enables us to deliver authentic and meaningful experiences.
Guests want an authentic experience – up to the point they don’t. Smells from the pig wallow on hot days don’t tick the ‘surprise and delight’ boxes of guests.
Agritourism brings stability and resilience. Merging tourism and farming isn’t easy but can be magical.
We don’t open the gate before start time as wandering guests are a safety risk around moving machinery. We let guests know they are free to wait in the parking paddock if they arrive early. We aren’t open all hours – we have set times and only allow guests who have booked in advance.
Our insurance provider asks us to do certain non-negotiables – all guests must wear enclosed shoes and sign a waiver, for example.
We consider our duty of care to animals when designing experiences. We aren’t lax in our obligations to biosecurity, or to safety.
Let’s be brave enough to make our own rules that protect our motivation to share our stories for years to come – such as not opening in summer - guests won’t enjoy a hot, wet, muddy, grumpy farmer.

Case study: Unico Zelo and Bottle Shock

Brendan is the founder and farmer behind the winery Unico Zelo which uses grapes from a co-operative of farmers who provide their grapes at no cost for a 50% share of the profits from the wine sales.

Their cellar door’s wine experience, Bottle Shock, was born out of a COVID-era YouTube channel. “We serve wine to guests blind and they tell us what they experience.” Examples include ‘Spot The Invader’ amongst 4 wines from France and 1 from Germany, or figure out the cheapest to the most expensive wine in a tasting.

Unico Zelo’s bread and butter is younger people which is where wine industry struggles, and their average sale is $250-$300. Being ‘supernerds’ about customer data helps (they recommend the CRM software Attio, which can be easily customised with a little coding to deliver anything a business needs).

Next for Unico Zelo? A replication of Byron Bay’s The Farm in the Adelaide Hills - “A license to print money.”

“A bottle of wine can be sold for $10 or $10,000. Make sure that the outcome you want is the byproduct of what you do - the sale comes from the story you tell. We prefer to be a market maker, not a market taker.”

Agritourism tour

Kushla joined others from the forum on a one-day agritourism tour by See Adelaide and Beyond:

Jurlique’s farm and garden for their luxury organic skin care
Beerenberg Farm’s strawberry fields and factory
Parracombe Premium Perry’s pear orchard cidery
Barrister’s Block winery (which is being replanted after being wiped out by the Black Summer bushfires)
Glen Ewin’s fig orchard and distillery

At Jurlique, visitors get a hands-on experience with the skincare range in the farm’s garden. Guests try toner, moisturiser, and other products while standing beside the plants that are the key ingredients, creating a direct connection between the farm and the finished product. Experiencing the products directly encourages purchases at the on-farm store, and tours are priced affordably to make it easy for visitors to explore and then shop - the tours are priced so guests take Jurlique products home with them. The farm runs master classes that creatively use leftover ingredients, like excess rose petals. While Jurlique continues to expand its agritourism offerings, it deliberately avoids competing directly with other local agritourism experiences, such as those of a local flower farm.

Beerenberg Farm is also growing its visitor experiences. Their latest offering is a hands-on jam scroll baking workshop, which can run year-round (unlike a pie baking class they previously ran in collaboration with a local apple orchard). Beerenberg hosts school groups and offers educational programs covering history, marketing, sustainability, and other curriculum-aligned topics.

Their future agritourism ideas include a picnic in the patch, where guests collect a hamper and enjoy it beside the strawberry fields, blind tasting competitions where guests guess what they are tasting, and adding a pairing of their preserves with wine and cheese in their café. Managing high visitor numbers and long queues is a good-to-have challenge; they are exploring pre-paid time slots so guests can head straight to the fields and café reservations during peak periods to improve the experience. While many visitors enquire about touring the factory, legal restrictions prevent this.

At Paracombe Premium Perry, farmer Damien shared the nationally-unique and high-tech way he is keeping his pears fresh for eating year-round - a different type of insight into farming.

Weddings and week-end pizza afternoons provide as much income as farming does. When the cidery is closed for private events and visitors arrive unexpectedly, the team responds graciously, offering a free juice and thanking guests for making the trip. Couples can also enjoy a unique blind blending experience, attempting to craft a cider tailored to their partner’s taste.