The slowest afternoons of the year bring in the guests a winery or a small hotel can least afford to lose. By November the weekend crowds are gone, the seasonal staff have left, and the tasting room or the front desk is run by whoever is still on the schedule. The people who walk in on a Thursday in the off-season are mostly members, returning guests, and travelers for whom this stop was the one that mattered on a trip that was really about something else. They came on purpose. Most properties train for the busy day and let the quiet day run itself, and the quiet day is where those guests get lost without anyone noticing, because a guest who leaves without buying or rebooking never shows up on a report.
Read the list before the doors open
In a tasting room that means the club roster and the day’s reservations, checked at the start of the shift rather than at the counter. A host who knows that the two o’clock booking is a founding member, or that a member who usually comes to pickup missed it last month, can greet that person as someone the winery has been expecting, and a missed shipment can be pulled and waiting at the counter before the member arrives. At a hotel front desk the same job falls to the arrivals report. Repeat stays should be flagged, along with whatever the property already knows about the last visit, such as the room they had, the dinner they booked, or the reason they gave for the trip. A slow day leaves time to read all of it.
Ask what brought them in, and use the answer
Off-season guests usually say why they came if anyone asks. A member wants to taste the new releases before deciding what to take home. A couple checking in on a Tuesday in November may be in town for a funeral, a graduation, or a look at retiring nearby. The question is easy. The harder part is changing what happens next because of the answer. A host who hears that a member came to compare last year’s Zinfandel with this year’s should pour the two side by side and ask which way the member leans. A front desk agent who hears that a guest is in town for a hard week can find a room at the quiet end of the hall and mention the restaurant that stays open late. If the afternoon goes on exactly as it would have without the answer, the guest knows the question was a formality.
Tell them what happened since they were last here
Returning guests already know the property’s founding story. What they don’t know is what happened this year. In wine country that is the harvest: when the picks came, what the weather did, which blocks came in early or stood in water, and what the winemaker had to decide because of it. A small hotel has its own version, whether that is a room redone over the summer, a new cook in the kitchen, a trail that washed out, or what the town is like once the visitors leave. The owner or GM should hand hosts and desk staff a short written update each month of the off-season, a few sentences in plain language, so that whoever is on shift can tell it in their own words. A guest who hears what happened since the last visit starts to feel like part of the place, and that feeling is what sends people home with a case or back for another stay.
Give anything new its own introduction
Off-season guests are often the first to see a new release, a new tasting format, or a reopened dining room, and they are the audience most likely to care. The standard tasting sheet gives every wine in the flight the same paragraph. A first vintage should come with a few sentences about why it exists and who decided to make it, told by the host rather than read off the sheet. The same goes for a hotel’s new suite or new menu. Members and repeat guests like being first, and the slow season is when they get the chance.
Put the people who like strangers on the quiet shifts
Off-season schedules tend to go to whoever is available, while the most experienced hosts take the time off they earned during the season. That is fair to the staff, but it leaves the most loyal guests with the newest people. At least one person on every off-season shift should be someone who knows the place well and likes talking to strangers, and the empty hours are the right time for that person to teach newer staff what to tell. Between guests the work is getting ready for the next one, which means reading the list again, tasting the open bottles, and going over the monthly update. A host with a book open or a desk agent on a phone is hard to interrupt, and most off-season guests won’t try.
Staff Workshops for tasting rooms and small hotels bring the whole team, including back of house, into one session on reading guests and telling the property’s story.
About the author
Patrick R. Dunn is the founder of Vianarra, a hospitality storytelling practice based in Sparks, Nevada. He trained in narrative at the University of Maine under Stephen King and folklorist Edward “Sandy” Ives, spent more than a decade as a National Park Service interpretive ranger at six sites, and led global crisis management and operational resilience teams for thirty years across four continents, through 9/11, Katrina, and Sandy. He holds WSET Level 3 and is the author of Stop Leading on Empty (Archway/Simon & Schuster). Subscribe to the Vianarra newsletter.