NEW YORK CITY – Sonesta International Hotels Corp. has launched Global Table by Sonesta, a new initiative set to debut in 2025 across select full-service Sonesta hotels. The program highlights emerging wine regions and showcases global culinary trends.
The inaugural partner, Wines of Rioja, is a historic wine region in Spain. From April through June, nearly 40 Royal Sonesta and Sonesta Hotels & Resorts around the country will serve a selection of wines from the region in flights, by the glass or by the bottle, along with tastings, dinners and other individual creative property activations. The spring events will help to mark the Wines of Rioja’s 100th anniversary celebration this year.
“The idea was to provide different experiences for our customers so that it differentiated our brand from other hotels,” Shawn Cryan, SVP strategy and innovation at Sonesta, told Hotel Management at the opening reception for the program in New York City. The idea, he explained, was to go beyond a traditional glass of wine that any hotel might serve. “It would be a story. It would be an environment in which people could try new things.”
David Morgan, vice president food and beverage strategy at Sonesta, described himself as “the intermediary” to make the deal happen, having worked with the wineries of the region in the past. “They wanted to partner with Sonesta,” he recalled.
In a statement, Rodrigo C. Gutiérrez Gutierrez, Rioja North American business director, noted that 2025 is the 100th anniversary of Rioja as a Denomination of Origin. “This creative collaboration offers a unique opportunity to share our passion for winemaking and introduce more people to the depth and diversity of our wines through this immersive experience."
Wine Dinners and Loyalty
Nine hotels—The Royal Sonesta Washington D.C. Capitol Hill; The Royal Sonesta Boston; The Royal Sonesta Chase Park Plaza St. Louis; The Royal Sonesta Chicago River North; The Clift Royal Sonesta San Francisco; The Royal Sonesta Houston Galleria; The Yorkville Royal Sonesta Toronto; Sonesta Columbus, Ohio; Sonesta White Plains (N.Y.) Downtown; and The Nautilus Sonesta Miami Beach—will host a Global Table by Sonesta wine dinner featuring Wines of Rioja. “We'll bring the winemakers in from Rioja, and they'll come and attend the wine dinners,” Morgan said.
Notably, these wine dinners will be available as VIP events to members of Sonesta’s Travel Pass loyalty program. “It's going to be available to some of our most valuable clients,” Cryan said. “It's really going to be something that's special—it's a VIP event to really unlock and then deliver these really irreplaceable, memorable, one of a kind experiences.” The dinners, he added, will “grow the value” of the loyalty program.
After June, Sonesta will highlight another region or a culinary trend. “It's a secret we're keeping very, very tightly at this point,” Cryan said when asked what the next step might be. “It may be an interesting new food opportunity or a new region of the world that has something very unique to offer—a type of cuisine, or something like that,” Lorie Juliano, Sonesta’s global head of communication, said during the reception.
Leveraging Scale
Cryan highlighted the work of Gina Uttaro, director of social media and content at Sonesta who has achieved a Level 3 Award in wine with the Wine & Spirit Education Trust. As a sommelier, Uttaro helped decide which wines would be on the list at various hotels, he said. Uttaro traveled with Morgan and Cryan to the wineries of Rioja and used her expertise to determine what would fit where. “Because of the size of the company and who we are as a company and as a brand, we were able to create this opportunity for our associates to participate in building a program and really defining who Sonesta is,” he said. “In this industry that we compete in at our size, we're able to offer those opportunities to our associates. And it really makes Sonesta a special company to be a part of.”
Morgan said that “very few” hotel companies today can create experiences like these. “The fact that we manage these hotels and they're all under our Sonesta flag allows us to be creative, but to be able to do it in a way that is consistent,” he noted.