When room revenue plummeted during the pandemic, many hotels leveraged their existing F&B assets, mainly focusing on takeaway and food delivery. Now, they are keen to turn this page to explore other untapped opportunities.
Hotelier India checks with some F&B professionals on how they are realigning their business strategies and employing innovative tactics to help their properties make a comeback.
What untapped opportunities can hotels explore by utilising their existing F&B infrastructure?
Prasanna Venkatesh, F&B Director, The Westin Hyderabad Mindspace: While no one had pre-emptive knowledge about dealing with the pandemic, it was with due diligence and permutation combination methods that we could gradually get back into the business and cater to our guests. Extensive F&B efforts were run throughout the pandemic, and we were able to return more robust post each wave.
We explored multiple avenues of driving revenues during this period and integrated newer business opportunities in our F&B model. With Marriott Bonvoy on Wheels, we brought luxury services to our guests’ doorsteps and regained their confidence and trust.
We also devised exclusive offers for Club Marriott guests and explored Corporate Catering, preceding the traditional outdoor catering events that we used to handle earlier. Sustainable packaging, tapping co-working spaces and pitching for cyclic menus has picked up the pace. There are similar untapped avenues that we neglected, which have become key areas of revenue generation today.
Pradipt Sinha, F&B Director, Crowne Plaza New Delhi Okhla: F&B business at hotels saw a paradigm shift when all leading players forayed into takeaway and home delivery space during the pandemic. We also launched a special ‘Takeaway Happiness’ menu and collaborated with food aggregators Zomato and Swiggy for home delivery services.
Apart from food deliveries, we focused heavily on selling hotel venues as Smart Office spaces and curating customised power lunch and dinner menus to suit their needs. Given their infrastructure and high cleanliness protocols, hotels became an ideal choice for companies looking for rental offices, co-working spaces and virtual work set up. We also launched the ‘Dial a Chef’ concept focusing on outdoor and institutional catering with packed lunch options.
Amanpreet Matharu, F&B Manager, Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai: Given their talented teams and expansive venues, it would be interesting to see the potential of offering masterclasses to limited audiences as an exclusive product. While many hotels and F&B businesses used Instagram and Facebook Lives to showcase their chefs’ and bartenders’ best creations, this can now evolve to in-person activations as a team-building activity for individuals from social clubs, residential societies or corporates.
Additionally, teams can look at evolving their F&B offerings to include end-to-end event management services for personalised house parties, including but not limited to catering, bartending, service, invitations and guestlists. Most city hotels have a loyal clientele who are a ready target group for offerings like catering to house parties, which appears to be a productive alternate revenue.
Most hotels also have multiple beautifully conceptualised and designed F&B outlets. Their visual appeal can be tapped as a source of revenue for film, series or video shoots, which hotels, including Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai, did utilise.
Manto Alpatt, Assistant Director-F&B, The Ritz Carlton, Pune: Innovation became a buzzword in terms of the overall ambience and services on offer. We tweaked priorities, plans and campaigns for the year, and marketing took the forefront to educate our guests on the safely executed tailored experiences they could enjoy in the comfort of their homes.
As remote working becomes the dominant status quo where guests use hotels as their make-shift office, how can hoteliers realign their F&B strategies to attract this tribe of bleisure travellers?
Manto Alpatt: Our hotels leaned in heavily on digitisation, technology and data to keep pace with nimble rivals and trace and follow increasingly digital-first happy habits of consumers. We extended partnerships with key market influencers and integrated into Marriott Bonvoy’s platform in phases across food delivery, payment, loyalty and rewards, as well as advertising.
This enabled us to serve a growing pool of customers increasingly transacting online. We rolled out unique experiences for seasonal activities, festivals and the Indian Premier League with special celebrations menus. This allowed us to go live on social media channels with their favourite player. Our hotels curated unforgettable experiences that came only with a Marriott Bonvoy membership.
Pradipt Sinha: ‘Bleisure’ travellers seek inimitable and inspiring setups for enhanced productivity and innovation. This audience can be divided into two segments – millennials looking for workcations in their individual capacity and corporates renting a space for a longer duration to streamline their operations or upcoming projects.
Menu engineering and lucrative price points play a significant role in both cases. To realign an F&B strategy, hotels need to create customised offerings based on an employee’s work schedule needs and lifestyle.
For example, the menu must be delicious and filling but light and healthy as employees don’t want to feel sleepy after lunch. Options like Asian Meal Bowls or Japanese Bento Boxes are excellent options in such cases.
The menu must consider that these guests are mostly glued to their laptops, which means minimal physical activity for long durations. Hence, the dishes should be high on proteins and low on carbohydrates and fats.
Amanpreet Matharu: Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai launched the ‘Work at Leisure’ programme, a combination of elevated product components, service enhancements and special touches to allow guests extra comfort and productivity in our hotels. Some features include providing facilities for work, including an executive chair, special express menus, and electronics on hire, amongst others.
Apart from this, we converted rooms or suites into office spaces by rearranging furniture as and when required, extending the lounge area for corporate meetings and assisting with AV needs. This allowed guests to conduct hybrid meetings with minimal people in the meeting room, while the majority participated through video conferencing.
Prasanna Venkatesh: Westin’s pillar of wellness allows us to focus on ingredients that are sourced and produced with utmost care. These customised offerings focus on people wellness, be it menu selection or healthy living options.
Maintaining hygiene and food safety has been a top priority for us for a long time now, and there is no compromise when it comes to our guests’ safety. With regular checks and audits, there is the utmost safety standard ensured throughout.
with competition.
Should hotels consider leasing kitchens for cloud kitchen requirements during non-peak hours?
Amanpreet Matharu: While the opportunity sounds attractive from an additional revenue front, operationally, it would be met with far too many obstacles to be practically viable. As the peak hours of both hotel and cloud kitchens are likely to overlap, the majority of the requirements will not be met.
Additionally, branded hotel chains have strict protocols for their kitchen. Applying these to a cloud kitchen would be cumbersome and time-consuming, resulting in very low efficiency for the two entities.
Manto Alpatt: While cloud kitchens is a global phenomenon, we prefer to invest in our own sustainability of operations to retain a dedicated customer base, consistency and quality versus leasing out. We choose to take deliveries through our own distribution channel and food aggregators to ensure wholesome meals, global flavours, sustainable packaging, and customised epicurean experiences.
Prasanna Venkatesh: The cloud kitchen concept has been doing rounds for a couple of years. Following the pandemic, there has been more exposure to smaller companies focusing on this idea as a revenue-generating model. This has worked exceptionally well for our hotel as well.
The Westin Hyderabad Mindspace invested in this concept, and today, we operate as a cloud kitchen for the entire Hyderabad market for a renowned establishment. This elevated our expectations as a revenue model and allowed us to explore this concept with other probable outlets as well.
Pradipt Sinha: Standalone restaurants in the country are picking up this trend of leasing kitchen areas and equipment during non-peak hours to meet their needs. However, many upscale hotels are not very open to such trends, as it could compromise their hygiene standards and safety protocols.
What about hotels leasing their F&B spaces to standalone marquee restaurant brands on a revenue-share model?
Pradipt Sinha: This concept has been a hit in western countries and is gradually making its place in the Indian hospitality market. It will work very well for the hotels with high footfall areas such as airport or transient hotels in terms of revenue.
However, from the brand identity point of view, the hotel will definitely miss the essence of having an iconic F&B name in its portfolio. Even if one gets a unique standalone marquee restaurant to its selection, it will have more branches in a few days, making it common for the guests.
Prasanna Venkatesh: This concept exists globally and is extremely common through the UK and the Middle East, where it has been an advantageous concept. There is no doubt that once hotels start integrating this concept, they are bound to increase their revenue. It will also provide much-needed support to standalone restaurants, allowing them to grow in a competitive market. Given our current clientele, there is an immense potential for success considering their urge to forever discover, explore and ideate on unique paths.
Manto Alpatt: It is crucial to explore ‘branded’ options, if at all. Restaurant operators can benefit from the hotel’s captive clientele, location benefits, and brand image. Moreover, hotels get an opportunity to elevate the customer experience by becoming a destination for both hotel guests and locals, resulting in higher F&B revenues and profitability.
Amanpreet Matharu: A strong collaboration between standalone restaurant brands and branded hotels is possible. Here hotels can give standalone marquee restaurants visibility and audience while the restaurant adds to the property’s overall footfalls. This could also help in spillover revenues and focused strategies for both parties.
