Hotels & Inns

A guest list on a clipboard with a pen on a wooden counter, next to a brass service bell and an upturned wine glass, on a gray November morning before opening.

Hotels & Inns, Insights, Staff Training, Tasting Rooms

The Slow-Season Shift

Patrick R. Dunn / October 25, 2026

The guests who walk in on a quiet November afternoon are mostly members and returning guests. Here is how tasting rooms and small hotel front desks can be ready for them.

An empty winery tasting room in November, with a single glass and a tasting sheet in the foreground and a book lying face down at the far end of the counter, autumn vines visible through the window.

Hotels & Inns, Sonoma County, Stories, Tasting Rooms, Wine Clubs

A founding member walks into a quiet Dry Creek Valley tasting room in November ready to buy a case, and walks out with nothing. Fifty years earlier, the Stanley Hotel’s last guests of the season changed everything for that hotel.