For many hospitality properties, room service sales have been a lucrative revenue stream for decades but recent events and competition have cut those profits dramatically.
Here are some facts you need to know.
Welcome to another edition of Hospitality Property School.
I am your instructor, Gerry MacPherson.
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The development of room service sales
Room service has been a key feature of high-end service since the Waldorf Astoria, in New York, first opened its doors in 1931.
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Giving guests the opportunity to order food in their own room was a smart move, but it also had other benefits, such as lower costs and improved room expectations. Since then, room service has become an established service that is available at many hospitality properties worldwide.
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In its prime, room service was considered an extravagance, but times have changed, and the quality of room service has been on somewhat of a downward trend since the early 2000s. The rise of app-based delivery services and travellers’ demands for authentic cuisine has normalized the luxury of eating what you want, where you want and when you want. That compared with typically high prices and limited menu offerings attached to in-room dining, this is no surprise.
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Properties now have an array of new competitors to contend with who already specialize in food orders. Luxury resorts in remote locations may be more immune as there is less choice for eating out, but as more and more high-end restaurants enter the delivery market, this will also change.
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The hospitality property industry has been blindsided by these developments and is struggling to keep pace with the rise of digital technology and the modernization of in-room dining.
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Some are adapting by signing deals with delivery services to provide food delivery but what about properties that don’t want to outsource their in-room dining? What can they do to reinvigorate the stale reputation of room service? Let’s look at some data that has been collected by a SuitePad survey and see if the data can help turn your service around.
Data to optimize room service sales
In the SuitePad survey, they determined the top five food and drink orders across a wide variation of properties. They found some interesting insights into their guest’s ordering patterns and practices that you as a hotelier or innkeeper made not be aware of. This information is invaluable.
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This sample consisted of 30,349 room service food orders and 20,267 room service drinks orders from a total of 670 hotels worldwide which were split into 4 categories: City Hotels, Design/Lifestyle Hotels, Leisure/Resort Hotels, and MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions) Hotels.
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The top 5 foods and top 5 drinks equal 55% of all room service orders in the data set.
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The top 5 food orders
- Burgers (included cheeseburgers, signature burgers, plain burgers, etc.)
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- Club Sandwich
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- Pasta Dishes
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- Caesar Salad
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- Fries
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Synopsis
Burgers and club sandwiches were the two most stable items across all property types with burgers consistently selling at about 30% of the total in-room food order share and club sandwiches at about 20%. This suggests they are popular items and are worth offering.
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The remaining three items, fries, pasta dishes, and Caesar salads had a more complex distribution among the different property types. Orders of fries were popular at design hotels and leisure resorts but performed significantly worse at city and MICE properties.
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Pasta dishes and Caesar salads only hit above the 20% mark once each and this was at city properties. At all other property types, they failed to reach ⅕ of the proportion of in-room orders with pasta performing particularly poorly at design hotels and Caesar salads performing quite poorly at leisure resorts.
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This disparity in order preferences by guests at the different property types might be surprising to some hoteliers and innkeepers. It shows that there is a clear link between the types of hotels that guests choose and their in-room ordering preferences.
The top 5 drink orders
- Orange Juice
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- Coffee
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- Cola
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- Water
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- Beer
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Synopsis
While orange juice seemed to be a clear winner in the overall results, the breakdown of the different order shares by property type reveals that it had major success at design hotels and leisure resorts, but was average and just below average at MICE and city hotels.
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This suggests that the type of guests at design hotels and leisure resorts are more likely to order snacky comfort food and drinks than at other property types.
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Beer performed poorly in all but the city hotel category, where it still didn’t manage to reach ⅕ of the total in-room order share for drinks. It’s likely that guests prefer to either take their customs elsewhere, such as local pubs and restaurants or to drink in the hotel bar or lobby which is a much more sociable environment.
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Cola was so popular at MICE hotels that it made up close to half of all in-room drinks orders at this hotel type. This may have to do with the fact that MICE hotels tend to cater to business people who are likely to order room service after a long day of conferences
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Orders of coffee were relatively consistent across the board, slightly under average at city hotels and slightly over average at leisure resorts. The results for coffee are difficult to analyze as many properties offer it for free in the room and with breakfast.
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Water was most popular at city hotels, maybe guests needed to cool off after a long day of exploring. It may be surprising, however, that in-room orders for water were low at leisure resorts.
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If you are a member of the Hospitality Property School Group, as a bonus, I will share a list of successful room service techniques that have worked with many properties.
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In conclusion
In-room dining is far from being on its last legs. Although competition in the form of app-based delivery services is on the increase, there’s no reason to think that hospitality properties cannot provide the quality of service they once did. All it shows is that hoteliers and innkeepers need to adapt their service to offer guests the same level of choice and convenience as the competition.
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By putting step-by-step strategies in place and ensuring your staff are well trained, room service could not only become an extra steady stream of income but a source of pride within your property.
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Do you have a room service program in place?
Let me know in the comments.
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We cover more on organizational structure in “The Guide to Owning & Operating a Hospitality Property – Successfully” book & course. You find more information at KeystoneHPD.com
You will have access to this episode for as long as you would like but if you would like to see all the bonuses you would have access to as a member of the Hospitality Property School Group, check out the short video in this episode post-show notes.
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In the next episode, I will talk about Starting a Bed and Breakfast.
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That’s it for today’s episode,
Until next time, have a fun day.
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You can find all the links in the show notes.
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⇒ TO READ OR LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE ON KEYSTONE HOSPITALITY PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT:
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