May 10th 2020
The role of third-party F&B operators in hotels
Over the last couple of years my work has taken me to something like forty countries, so I guess I speak with some knowledge of hotel F&B from America to Africa and Europe to Asia. For the most part it’s a struggle. Functional or old-fashioned restaurants, bars with shoddy service, uncomfortable furniture with tables that knock your shin and o, a (broken) plug point an inconvenient six foot away. Or the room service that never serves, ice maker that never makes in the corridor two floors down or worse still a chef who never learned to make a fluffy omelette is scheduled to work the busy egg station. Again. And I’ve seen most things on the road including a body in one, en route to my hotel recently which turned out not to be the global hotel brand that I thought I’d booked while the ten-year legal case had gone on and on with no (apparent) end in sight but the signs and the equally inefficient staff remain still now.
I was speaking recently at a GRIF briefing alongside the outstanding AHIF conference in Adis Abba on the role of third-party F&B operators in hotels. If you hadn’t already twigged, I feel quite strongly on this, thankfully I was in good company including the operators themselves whose comforting nods and strategic action supported my mantra and we can look forward to hotels with carefully designed and developed F&B spaces, curated social working zones, global brands that offer reassurability and room service where you’re in charge (yes, you might have to get it yourself from the café downstairs, but at least you’ll get it when you want it).As one of the remaining global emerging economies, Africa is enjoying a surge in hotel growth, and the work that Nobel Peace Prize winning President Sahle-Work Zewde has done goes a long way to ensure that Adis Abba is delivering the biggest fiscal growth for any African country. Africa could well be the subject of another diary next time, but back to F&B because this is a challenge for global hotel operators whether they are opening in emerging markets like Africa or crowded markets like Dubai. How to drive volume, rev par, and, I think even more importantly as it drives the former, Guest satisfaction and local relevancy.I’m encouraged from our GRIF briefings and in business development meetings now. Global hoteliers are now working hard to build better hotels, not just with more efficient check ins and comfy overnight stays, but less and smaller F&B spaces with intimacy, social vibrancy and relevance, focusing on smaller experiential spaces that not only drive overnight Guest satisfaction, they become a hub for the community for all occasions, be they daytime meetings, g-zennial workspaces, entertainment or the all essential conference playgrounds that result in wine stained receipts questionably but inevitably signed off… F&B in hotels is getting beautifully and fabulously better as the drive for Guest satisfaction and local relevancy becomes they key to success.
This article first appeared in www.hoteliermiddleeast.com
Contact: David@sociusgroup.com
Socials: @singletoncity.
