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.
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: