My first stop was The Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn. I arrived late, like 1am late. I flew out on a Sunday so instead of flying out early, I decided to take a late flight as not to take up my entire Sunday. Bad move. I flew through Los Angeles and when I arrived my flight was delayed 2 hours, putting my departure time out of LA after 10pm. I knew when I got to San Fran I still had over an hour drive to the hotel. So by the time I got my rental car, plugged in my GPS and actually arrived at the hotel it was waaay past my bedtime. So I drove to this hotel at night, pitch black. It was super hard to even find the entrance, this hotel is sort of right in the middle of a residential area - weird. Once your on the property it isn't so bad and it definitely has character of the area. It's even where part of the Bachelor was filmed when Ben Flajnik was on. I don't watch that show but it was neat to watch the episode afterwards and recognize the places I had been. 
Napa Valley Marriott - there was nothing special about this property. It could have been a Marriott in Beulah, North Dakota. Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE a Marriott but this just wasn't doing it for me. 
AVIA Hyatt Napa - This property was very contemporary, very clean and modern, located in downtown Sonoma. This property just didn't have the meeting space to meet our needs.
Vino Bello - This was an ok property, For some reason it reminded me of an apartment complex. They had tons of meeting space and were in the process of doing renovations on their lobby. It was kind of weird though, it was located in the middle of an industrial park. 
My list visit was the Westin Verasa Napa. This hotel was also very contemporary and modern but it still had a Napa feel. It's only a few years old and located just on the perimeter of downtown Napa, near the Oxbow Public Market. They had a great lobby and bar area with lots of outdoor space. This was it! 
As I mentioned before for my site visit I concentrated on visiting wineries that had meeting space. I quickly found out those are few and far between. We also needed 2-4 meeting rooms with AV so that was the challenge. I visited Sebastiani Vineyards and fell in love with the place for meetings and the experience. Also, my contact there had a passion for events and totally got my vision for our event. Since this one was located in Sonoma and we were going with the Westin we couldn't make this work. Sad but it happened for the best.
After visiting the wineries I quickly found out we wouldn't be able to hold our meetings in the wineries but for sure provide a unique experience during our evening activities.
Stay tuned for the details of the actual event.
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