One of the most common questions a hotel concierge gets in wine country is also one of the hardest to answer well:
Where should we go wine tasting?
The answer depends on the guest.
A couple celebrating an anniversary might want a completely different winery than a group of friends visiting for a weekend. Someone who loves Pinot Noir might be looking for something entirely different from a guest who cares most about an incredible vineyard view. Some travelers want intimate, appointment-only tastings. Others want somewhere relaxed where they can buy a bottle and stay for the afternoon.
For hotels, helping guests navigate all of that usually means relying on a concierge’s personal knowledge, keeping a spreadsheet or printed recommendation sheet, or sending guests a series of winery websites and hoping they figure it out themselves. Oxto was built to make that process much easier.
Oxto is a discovery and reservation platform for wine and hospitality experiences. Hotels can use Oxto to organize their favorite wineries into curated collections, share those recommendations directly with guests, and give travelers a much easier way to discover where they actually want to go.
Create a curated collection of the wineries your hotel recommends
The simplest way for a hotel to use Oxto is to create a collection of its favorite wineries. Instead of giving guests a static list of names, hotels can create a digital guide that allows travelers to actually explore each recommendation. A hotel might create collections such as:
- Our Favorite Sonoma Wineries
- Best Wineries Near the Hotel
- Where to Taste Pinot Noir
- Best Winery Views
- Romantic Wine Tastings
- Wineries for Groups
- Hidden Gems in Sonoma
- Best Napa Wineries for First-Time Visitors
Guests can open the collection, explore wineries, compare experiences, save places they like, and continue planning from there. The result is a recommendation that feels far more useful than a PDF or a handwritten list at the concierge desk.
Make your wine recommendations part of the hotel experience
A hotel’s wine recommendations should feel like an extension of its hospitality. Oxto collections can be customized so hotels can create something that feels aligned with their own brand and guest experience. The same collection can then be used throughout the guest journey. A hotel can include it in:
- Pre-arrival emails
- Digital welcome guides
- Guest text messages
- Concierge recommendations
- QR codes in guest rooms
- Printed welcome materials
- Lobby collateral
- Confirmation emails
- Local activity guides
Instead of requiring a guest to ask, “Do you have any wineries you recommend?”, the hotel can proactively give every guest access to a curated wine country guide. A QR code in a room, for example, could simply say:
Planning a day in wine country? Explore our favorite wineries.
The guest scans it and immediately has a curated list to explore.
Give concierges a much easier way to answer guest questions
Oxto also makes the concierge experience significantly easier. Imagine a guest texts:
We are looking for a few wineries tomorrow. We love Pinot Noir, want something beautiful, and would prefer smaller producers.
Instead of sending five separate links or manually typing recommendations, the concierge can send one Oxto collection. The guest can then explore the options independently. This matters because good hospitality is not just about giving someone information. It is about reducing friction.
The best hotel recommendations make guests feel like someone already did the research for them.
Help guests find wineries based on what they actually want
Travelers increasingly expect recommendations to be personalized. On Oxto, users can explore wineries based on the characteristics that matter to them rather than simply scrolling through a generic list of wineries in a region. A traveler might be searching for:
- The best wineries for Pinot Noir
- Wineries with beautiful vineyard views
- Wineries with food pairings
- Wineries that offer seated tastings
- Wineries where they can purchase wine by the glass
- Smaller boutique wineries
- Luxury wine tasting experiences
- Casual wineries for groups
- Wineries near a particular destination
- Experiences at a certain price point
That gives hotel guests more control over their itinerary while still keeping the hotel at the center of the recommendation.
Let guests continue from discovery to reservation
Finding a winery is only part of the problem. Travelers then have to figure out how to visit it. For participating wineries using Oxto Reserve, guests can request or make reservations directly through Oxto. That means the guest journey can move from:
Where should we go?
This looks perfect.
Let’s book it.
without forcing the traveler to restart their search across multiple websites. For hotels trying to create a seamless guest experience, that continuity matters.
Understand what your guests are actually interested in
There is another benefit to moving hotel recommendations from a printed list to a digital platform: the recommendations become measurable. Hotels working with Oxto can gain insight into how guests engage with their collections.
That can help a hotel understand which wineries and experiences are generating the most interest from its guests. For example, a hotel may discover that guests are disproportionately interested in:
- Pinot Noir producers
- Smaller boutique wineries
- Food and wine pairings
- Wineries with views
- Certain regions or appellations
- Particular wineries within its collection
That information can become valuable far beyond the concierge desk.
Turn guest interest into better local partnerships
If hundreds of hotel guests repeatedly engage with a particular winery, that is a useful signal. It could lead to a deeper relationship between the hotel and that producer.
Perhaps the hotel invites the winery to host a tasting. Maybe the restaurant creates a winemaker dinner. Maybe the property features the producer at an event. Maybe the winery becomes part of a preferred guest itinerary.
Instead of guessing which partnerships might resonate with guests, hotels can use real guest behavior to inform those decisions. That turns Oxto from simply a recommendation tool into a way for hotels to better understand how their guests interact with the surrounding hospitality ecosystem.
Why this matters for wine country hotels
Wine country is unusual because the destination itself can be difficult to navigate. There may be hundreds of wineries within driving distance of a hotel, all offering different wines, experiences, price points, reservation structures, and atmospheres.
For someone visiting for the first time, that amount of choice can actually make planning harder. Hotels already play an important role in solving that problem. Oxto simply gives them a better infrastructure for doing it.
Instead of maintaining a static winery list, hotels can create a living, shareable guide to the places they genuinely recommend.
Guests get a better experience. Concierges spend less time repeatedly answering the same planning questions. Hotels gain insight into what their guests actually want. And wineries gain another way to be discovered by travelers already visiting their region.
The easiest way for a hotel to get started with Oxto
Start with one collection. Choose the wineries your team recommends most often and create a simple guide such as: Our Favorite Wineries Near the Hotel.
Then use that link everywhere guests already ask for recommendations. Put it in your welcome email. Give it to your concierge team. Create a QR code for guest rooms. Add it to your digital guest guide. From there, create more specialized collections based on the questions guests ask most frequently.
The goal is not to overwhelm travelers with more information. It is to give them a better answer to a question they are already asking:
Where should we go?
Discover wineries, tastings, events, and hospitality experiences across the United States, and book directly when you find the right one.