Santa Rosa’s HMS Travel, acquired by Adelman Travel, brings Sonoma wineries into specialized cruises

Jeff Chamberlain feels sure the Mediterranean cruise he took last year would have been great all by itself.

But his vacation featured the added bonus of spending nearly two weeks with a Sonoma County winemaking family and touring European wineries with regional experts. Those extras made for an experience that Chamberlain and his wife, Dana, are eager to repeat.

“It took it to another level,” he said. To top it off, “we met new friends that we still keep in touch with.”

The Chamberlains, who live in Santa Rosa and work in software sales and marketing, last spring joined a luxury tour of 90 wine lovers hosted by Ken and Diane Wilson, the owners of Healdsburg’s Wilson Winery and seven other wine companies. Wilson Winery plans to host its next cruise in 2017, traveling from Istanbul to Venice.

To produce the wine cruises, Wilson and other Sonoma and Napa wineries turned to a Santa Rosa business, HMS Travel Group.

The company of more than 30 years is known for its Food & Wine Trails division. It offers both culinary and wine tours, but its main focus is to help wineries build their brands with international cruises that bring together wine executives and their most passionate enthusiasts.

Food & Wine Trails boasts that it arranges more wine cruises than any other company in the world.

What sets the local business apart is the pairing of high-end cruise packages with onshore excursions led by its own wine experts. Both winery and restaurant owners say the shore tours offer an insider’s guide to the wines, wineries and history of top viticulture regions.

“Food & Wine Trails are amazing because they set these things up for us,” said Terri Stark, who with her husband chef Mark owns a half-dozen Sonoma County restaurants.

The Starks in 2014 teamed up with Adam and Dianna Lee of Santa Rosa’s Siduri Wines to host a cruise for food and wine lovers that went from Barcelona to Venice. This summer the two couples will host another cruise tour going from Lisbon to Paris.

HMS Travel, with $12 million in annual sales, recently announced its acquisition by Adelman Travel, a Milwaukee, Wis., company with $600 million a year in revenue and a reputation for specializing in corporate travel.

HMS Travel President Larry Martin will remain on hand to guide Food & Wine Trails.

The local company’s sales have roughly doubled in the past six years, Martin said. And the outlook remains bright as wine companies seek new ways to market themselves in an era where direct sales have become a key way to grow the business.

“There’s a ton of wineries trying to go direct to consumers,” he said. He has witnessed the growth of such efforts following a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court case that allowed the expansion of interstate wine shipments.

Among the benefits that Food & Wine Trails provides its tour guests are face time with their favorite winemakers and what Martin calls “authenticity” when visiting far-flung wine regions. Instead of using travel guides to lead the shore excursions, he turns to sommeliers, wine writers and other experts from the local wine industries.

HMS, which has been in business over 30 years, set out to become what Martin calls a tour “manufacturer” as opposed to a travel company that sells other people’s excursions.

“We wanted to create a brand,” he said. “To do that we had to create our own product.”

Cruising remains a popular pastime, with 24 million passengers expected to step aboard this year, according to Cruise Lines International Association, the world’s largest cruise industry trade association. And various forms of wine cruises have become popular enough that even membership retailer Costco offers them on its website.

In the cruising world, Food & Wine Trails is operating in the luxury segment of the market, working with such cruise lines as Oceania, Silversea and Uniworld River Cruises.

For example, the Starks’ and Siduris’ 12-day cruise from Lisbon in late July has a list price starting at $4,174 per person, including airfare. A tour for Healdsburg’s Rochioli Vineyards & Winery cruise, featuring three nights in Lisbon and a seven-night Duoro River cruise in Portugal and Spain, lists for $4,623, excluding airfare.

The cruise ships the wineries use tend to be considerably smaller than the massive ones that take guests to such locales as Alaska or the Caribbean. The ocean-going vessels typically hold between 600 and 1,200 guests and are likened by those who’ve been on them to four-star hotels that cater to food and wine lovers.

And who are the guests? Martin described the more than 9,000 patrons on his marketing list as people who typically spend $50 or more for a bottle of wine. Many of them fit a category he calls “the aspirationals,” one step down from those so wealthy that they possess their own yachts or private jets. In contrast to the super rich, he said, his guests are more curious, open and appreciative.

Many of them also are members of wine clubs, typically connected with the winery hosting a particular cruise.

What the guests experience are a series of planned and impromptu gatherings with the winery owner or winemaker. The schedule typically includes tastings and wine seminars, a dinner with the winemaker and, in the Starks’ case, cooking classes. On shore are the optional winery education excursions, which cost from $200 to $400 each.

Besides the formal events, other opportunities arise. On their tour, the Starks and Lees divided up and led about 40 guests on a “tapas crawl” one night in Barcelona. It was a cuisine familiar to the restaurateurs, who own Bravas Bar de Tapas in Healdsburg.

And then there are days when the guests and winemakers simply gather before dinner to share a bottle of wine that someone brings back from one of the toured wineries or from a local wine shop. Those informal times also prove valuable in deepening relationships, winery officials said.

“There’s a huge bonding factor because of that,” said Adam Lee, founder and winemaker at Siduri.

Some wine club members brought friends on the cruise, and they ended up becoming wine club members, too, Lee said.

Emily McCutchan, wine club manager for Wilson, said last spring’s tour was her first wine cruise and she heeded the advice of Martin “to make the most of every opportunity” with each guest. Her efforts included not only having a bottle of Wilson wine in each stateroom to welcome the guests but also taking time during the cruise to become better acquainted with each person.

“You have the whole 10 days to get to know these people and build a relationship,” McCutchan said.

For Martin, the wine cruises are the result of ties he has built over the decades.

Back in the 1970s, he spent seven years going on annual three-week wine tours around the U.S. with the former Sonoma County Wineries Association.

HMS takes credit for launching the nation’s first wine cruise in 1989 with Bon Appétit magazine. The tour featured five Napa and Sonoma wineries.

When the wine cruise business began to grow, Martin and his wife, Laura, decided to add shore excursions that would give guests a chance to visit international wine regions.

In this effort, Martin had an edge. He then held the title of governor for the Slow Foods organization in California. It helped to build his network of sommeliers, wine writers and other experts to lead the excursions, which this year will serve about 3,000 of both the wineries’ guests and regular cruise passengers.

The results attracted Adelman, which since 2012 has purchased two other consumer travel companies. Adelman CEO Bob Chaiken said what’s particularly striking about Food & Wine Trails is its unique network of wine experts and onshore excursions.

“That’s the big difference,” he said.

Martin said he chose to sell now because the business with 16 staff members has reached a point where it requires a significant investment to reach the next level of growth. Adelman has the resources to accomplish such goals, he said, and he will remain here as president doing the work he loves.

Before the acquisition, Chaiken spent some days at the HMS office on Fourth Street in Santa Rosa.

The business may sit on one of the downtown’s major retail streets, but Chaiken noticed that it draws almost no walk-in traffic. The reason is that Food & Wine Trails connects with prospective clients mostly through its website, its marketing lists and the various wine clubs.

“I think a lot of people wouldn’t know what it is,” Chaiken observed.

While the packages may appear pricey to many, Martin maintained that his wine cruises are virtually equal to the cost to travel as a regular passenger on the same ship. The wine cruise costs about $300 more per person, he said, but that amount is basically offset by shipboard credits and other benefits.

Similarly, he maintained his cruises offers significant benefits to wineries.

Roughly 20 to 30 percent of his wine cruise slots come from his marketing efforts and website rather than from the wine clubs. That gives the wineries another chance to add to their fan base.

Also, the wineries generally receive $5,000 to $30,000 per cruise in revenue sharing from Food & Wine Trails, he said.

Among the first-time wine cruises this June will be Calistoga’s Schramsberg & Davies Vineyards, led by vintners Hugh and Monique Davies. Their cruise from Monte Carlo to Barcelona is already sold out.

The cruise will feature 40 cases of wine for 120 guests, but Schramsberg & Davies marketing manager Matthew Levy quickly noted that those bottles will be shared over seven days.

Over the years, wine club members have asked when the winery would sponsor a cruise, Levy said. Schramsberg & Davies turned to Food & Wine Trails due to its “great reputation” and has been pleased by the response of wine lovers.

“The fact that we did sell out,” Levy said, “I think we hit the nail on the head with that one.”

You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @rdigit