There is a lot of maybe around in room dining – it’s purpose, profitability and longevity.
Is in room dining still a service that hotels should provide? Maybe.
A topic that’s been flirted with over the last 5 years, and has many viability drivers especially beyond revenue, and also equally has many reasons to remove this offering. Whilst in room dining is convenient for hotel guests, so is Grab Food, Uber Eats, GoJek, FoodPanda, the list goes on, but having a waiter bring you a meal prepared with the white table cloth service to your room is the differentiator. Is this luxury? Maybe.
Is it worth a hotels marketing and F&B team effort to compete with external food vendors or would it be a bigger hit to them to not offer in room dining at all? Maybe.
Could hotels provide a service and an internal revenue stream by providing a menu that is curated from external vendors, or fee driven delivery collection service of the meals, and serve this to you in their usual white cloth fashion? Maybe.
Food prepared in house and served on proper dinnerware is substantially more delightful than making sure you don’t spill chilli oil all over yourself from the flimsy plasticware delivered from a food vendor and a makeshift bed table, and not to mention the environmental impact as it’s served with multiple plastic bags, cutlery and containers, and not to mention carbon miles. A rumbling belly at 11pm will blur some minds from decision making for the long-term impact, and there isn’t a reason for it not to when we have these options at our finger tips, so is it on the hotels to try to cater for these guests in a similar way to 3rd party vendors? Maybe.
What are your thoughts on in room dining vs third party food vendors?
Do you use either when you are traveling?
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