Hoteliers See Uptick In In-Room Dining

Deluxe hotel companies have been under pressure to cut expenses, but 24-hour room service is one amenity on which hoteliers have held the line. In fact, the introduction of upscale menus, timesaving solutions and guaranteed delivery times have resulted in wider usage of room service, according to these hotels.

"Your guests come to expect, not only that room service will be available when they want it, but that the speed of delivery and quality of service will be as always," said Atef Mankarios, president of St. Regis Hotels & Resorts. "You can't risk disappointing these guests. They're loyal but they're also discerning."

Understanding that much of the demand for room service at night is driven by business travelers arriving in a city after the restaurants on property have closed, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts this year has enabled travelers to place their orders from their limousines en route to the hotel from the airport. "This allows the meal to be prepared and delivered to the room just as the guest is arriving," said Sam Ioannidis, director of food and beverage at the Four Seasons Houston, one of the first properties in the chain to adopt it. "With international travelers especially, people arrive at the hotel tired and hungry from the long trip, so they really appreciate the convenience."

Similarly, when the W Hotel Times Square opened last year in New York, Paul Sale, the executive chef at Blue Fin, expected sushi to be a hot item among his restaurant diners. Unexpectedly, spicy tuna, toro and yellow tail proved a comparable success for room service.

"Given that many business travelers are working late in their guest rooms, they need to eat but don't feel they should be deprived of what we're serving on the regular menu," Sale said. "Yet, the demand for sushi is especially interesting. The number of requests increases later at night when people want something lighter." The fact that made-to-order sushi finds itself on room service menus at deluxe and upper upscale U.S. hotels at all is indicative of how high profile room service has become.

For the lodging industry, 24-hour room service typically was a brand standard at top-tier chains that hotel companies felt obliged to offer if they wanted to be competitive in that segment of the market. Yet, room service was labor-intensive and, hence, never much of a profit generator. It is not especially remunerative today, even though it's grown in popularity and demand, mostly by high-end travelers prepared to pay a premium for the special service.

Hotels are cognizant that business travelers are working under more duress these days, either due to the economy or security concerns. Consequently, they are seeing more travelers opt for room service because they want to continue working in their rooms through the dinner hour.

"We think this explains the increase in room service orders for simple, comfort-style food," said Brian Pierce, director of restaurants at the Phoenician in Scottsdale, Ariz., which this year created a grilled specialty pizza for the room service menu. "Sometimes, the simpler the item, the more it tends to sell."

Four Seasons' Ioannidis confirmed that such items as chicken soup, a Reuben sandwich and crab cakes recently have been among room service's best sellers in Houston.



Tastes Change With Times

Yet, according to Ioannidis and the Phoenician's Pierce, a countertrend exists, with business travelers opting for the opposite of comfort food. In fact, they're able to order room service off the menus of their hotels' respective destination restaurants, Mary Elaine's and Quattro. This is when room service becomes in-room dining.

"We want guests to have as great a range of options as possible, so they're free to choose," Ioannidis said.

Logistically, these orders are filled by the restaurant's kitchen. "The chefs know to bump these orders ahead of the other tickets because there's a time issue—they have to be delivered to a room, rather than the table," Pierce said.

Likewise, many room service requests at The Ritz-Carlton Rose Hall Jamaica are for items from Jasmine, the property's gourmet restaurant. "Travelers' tastes have gotten much more sophisticated over the years, so they're as demanding of room service as they are the restaurant," said executive chef Dennis McIntyre. "The quality of the food and service, in fact, have to be the same."

Jasmine's cuisine, a mix of Asian cooking techniques and Jamaican ingredients the hotel has dubbed "Jasian," is a good test of this, McIntyre said, because the flavors are so unique.

"We try to be flexible in adapting dishes from the restaurant to be served in room and even have created special dishes to suit guests' tastes, if given adequate time," he said.

The number of special requests is up at the Renaissance Eden Roc in Miami Beach, as well. "Meeting attendees, especially, will gather in the suite of a colleague and request platters of hors d'oeuvres or fruit and cheese," said Mark Butcher, director of food and beverage. "When these requests are made earlier, they are part of the conference planning process. Lately, the requests are more spur of the moment, so they're handled by room service."

Ensuring guests get their room service orders delivered on time always has been a tricky proposition, and the stakes only have gotten higher as business travelers have come under more time pressures of their own.

"At lower price point hotels, there may be more room to maneuver, but not at the deluxe level," said Rudolf Tauscher, general manager of the Mandarin Oriental New York, which is under construction. "As we plan our staffing, we know we have to be able to deliver on our room service promises. If we say delivery in 30 minutes, that's what we must do. If you over-promise and under-deliver, it's unacceptable."

While 30 minutes wait time is the generally accepted industry standard, some properties have upped the assurances to 20 minutes. At The Phoenician, for example, VIP guests get this special treatment. "The staff member taking the order knows from the computer which guests have VIP status," Pierce said. "They're either high-ranking members of the frequency program or high profile in some other way." In addition, VIP orders get embellished with a "petit option" from the chef and delivered by a more formally attired "room service butler."

According to Pierce, such extras are just one of the ways the hotel is seeking to bestow "special recognition" on highly valued guests.

The irony with timely room service deliveries is that the order conceivably can show up too early at the guest's door. "Take morning coffee, for example," Tauscher said. "If the guest is told 20 minutes or 30 minutes and the server shows up in 15 minutes, you run the risk of the guest being in the shower—and inconvenienced."