Sandra Carvão is Chief of Tourism Market Intelligence and Competitiveness at the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) since June 2018. Before that, she was Chief of Communications and Publications for 8 years until May 2018 where she was responsible for UNWTO’s strategic positioning.

Prior to this post, Sandra was Deputy Chief at UNWTO’s Market Trends, Competitiveness and Trade in Tourism Services Department between 2007 and 2010. During this period, Sandra coordinated the Tourism Resilience Committee created by UNWTO to address the impacts of the global economic crisis 2008-2009 on tourism. Prior to joining UNWTO in 2003, Sandra held a position as market manager in the Portuguese National Tourist Office in Lisbon. Sandra has a degree in International Relations, Economics Branch, by the Instituto de Ciências Sociais e Políticas/Universidade Técnica de Lisboa and a postgraduade degree in Marketing by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

Mariëtte du Toit-Helmbold established Destinate, a destination management and strategic marketing agency, in 2013 after ten years as the award-winning CEO of Cape Town Tourism.

Destinate develops and helps implement strategy, builds brands, markets destinations and connects people with great brands and destinations (often over good food and wine).

Mariette is in demand internationally as a tourism and marketing strategist, facilitator and speaker on tourism, destination management, wine tourism and innovation in marketing.

She has great insight in wine tourism and was responsible for the first national research project on wine tourism for South Africa. She developed South Africa’s first national wine tourism strategy and led the first phase of implementation thereof.

The agency is involved in a number of wine tourism projects in South Africa and globally.

Paul Wagner has been an instructor for Napa Valley College's Viticulture and Winery Technology Department for the past twenty-five years and teaches at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone. He is also a guest lecturer at many universities, including the Wintour MBA program in Europe, and has spoken at more than eighty conferences throughout the world on wine, wine tourism, wine education, public affairs, and wine marketing.

He has also written several books: With Liz Thach and Janeen Olsen, Wine Marketing & Sales, Strategies for a Saturated Market by The Wine Appreciation Guild, which won the Gourmand International Award in 2008 for the best wine book of the year for professionals. The third edition of that work was published in 2019. With John Crotts and Byron Marlowe, Wine Sales and Distribution, by Rowman and Littlefield, which won the Gourmand Award for 2019. A third book, Artisan Public Relations, is due to be published in 2020. With Rick Kushman of Capital Public Radio, currently hosts “Bottle Talk”, a weekly conversation about wine. In 2019 recorded a series of lectures on wine for the Great Courses program at the Teaching Company: “The Instant Sommelier.”