How California Wine Country hotels are chasing lost group travel business

Slow, but steady. That’s how North Bay hotels and industry organizations are describing the return of group business, a segment of the hard-hit sector that was put on ice during the pandemic.

“The business market (for hotels) for the most part is fledgling as businesses are still struggling with how they bring people together,” said Pete Singer, spokesman for the Sacramento-based California Lodging & Hotel Association. He noted the Delta variant of COVID-19 is slowing that down. “Our forecast has consistently been that it won’t really be until 2024 until there's a pre-pandemic-level resurgence.”

In the North Bay, some group business is starting to return.

The Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn and Spa in the town of Sonoma in the last two weeks has hosted both corporate and social groups. The hotel had five groups the week of July 19 and another five the week of July 26, said Michelle Heston, executive regional director of public relations.

Sales calls are up and some of the return business is coming from re-bookings of events or travel curtailed during the pandemic shutdowns. “There's still a lot of that in the marketplace,” she said.

The gatherings of late have been comprised of smaller corporate meetings, but mostly social events, such as graduations, weddings, milestone birthdays and anniversaries, Heston said. The percentage breaks down to about 70% social and 30% corporate.

“Every (business) group is a little different, depending on what the mandates are from their internal organizations and headquarters, but I think we're getting a lot who still want to still come,” Heston said. “I think people are hesitant to cancel again, but obviously paying attention, and rightfully so.”

Tim Zahner, executive director of the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau, also has noted an increase in interest among groups wanting to return to the region, so the agency is working on a “How to Plan a Wine Country Meeting” guide.

“While we see an uptick in meeting requests, and there are some professional meeting planners looking for dates, a lot of our interest is also from administrative assistants tasked with planning a meeting, likely because the company is too small for a meeting planner or they don’t have that position anymore,” Zahner said. The bulk of interest so far has come from within the state, he added.

Further north in Sonoma County, Hotel Trio in Healdsburg has been recapturing groups wanting to visit the small tourist-oriented city, said Brooke Igleheart Ross, director of sales and marketing.

“We’re in a destination that is so focused around food and wine, and social gatherings are really starting once again,” she said. “That triggers the business community (to meet at the hotel).” Those businesses include distributors, winery workers and vendors.

There also are a number of developments underway in Healdsburg, so project management teams are frequently meeting at Hotel Trio, Ross said. But it’s the corporate travelers the hotel is trying to woo.

“I think with the social responsibility of businesses, they are more cautious in terms of allowing their associates to travel once again,” Ross said. “We're still working to get back that business traveler that we used to have, but we are starting to see a move in our preferred direction.”

Napa Valley is seeing a “significant uptick in leads coming in from meeting planners that want to host their next group event in Napa Valley later this year or early in 2022,” said Linsey Gallagher, president and CEO of Visit Napa Valley.

Gallagher said the meetings on the books this year are primarily corporate, and include attendees from around the country.

“Visit Napa Valley is actively promoting the Napa Valley as an ideal meeting destination for small- to mid-sized gatherings, which include a variety of al fresco venue options through our ‘Crush that Meeting’ campaign,” Gallagher said. The campaign offers to help plan social and corporate events, including incentive trips or team-building meetings.

The Napa River Inn typically relies on about 15% of corporate business, said Sara Brooks, general manager.

“Our mix of meetings versus leisure is pretty small compared to the bigger hotels,” Brooks said. “We are starting to see (group business) rebound, but the demand for leisure is so drastic right now that we are unable to accommodate most groups looking for any dates before November 2021.”

Though it’s not wine country, Marin County’s coastal appeal and local culinary offerings also attract groups, and they are slowly making their way back to high-end hotels like Casa Madrona Hotel and Spa in Sausalito.

Over the last 90 days, group business is starting to come back with smaller groups of between five and 15 people, said Jim Gerney, interim general manager at the property, and regional vice president at Met West Terra Hospitality, which operates the hotel.

“But it still seems to be a little bit of a pendulum that kind of comes and goes,” he said, noting that Casa Madrona strives for 30% of its revenue to come from group business.

“We're at 15% to 20%,” Gerney said. “We’ll hit 30% in August, but that will be the first month we've gotten back to the full group percentage.”

Most of the groups coming to Casa Madrona — largely from the tech and medical sectors — are headquartered locally or in the Bay Area, noted Alexandra Stolle, director of sales.

Stolle said there are meetings scheduled over the next two weeks for groups between five and 10 people, and that bookings continue.

And fear of the Delta variant so far hasn’t deterred people from coming back, she noted. In fact, Marin County, according to its health and human services department, has the highest vaccination rate in California.

“A lot of these corporate groups that come here are 100% confident that the people that attend these meetings have been vaccinated,” Stolle said.

Cheryl Sarfaty covers tourism, hospitality, health care and education. She previously worked for a Gannett daily newspaper in New Jersey and NJBIZ, the state’s business journal. Cheryl has freelanced for business journals in Sacramento, Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from California State University, Northridge. Reach her at cheryl.sarfaty@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4259.