In-room dining in hotels is one of the aspects that customers value most when looking for accommodation. This service deals with meeting the needs of the guest directly in their room by making food and beverage services available to them. If you work in the hospitality sector or would like to be part of it, you have to know the importance of in-room dining, the types that exist and how to adapt it to each type of accommodation.
Depending on this, in-room dining service will have one relevance or another, and will vary greatly in form and substance. Traditional or modern, breakfasts or all kinds of meals, vegan options… Options are endless, and surely there is one that fits perfectly in your hotel. For this reason, it is important that you have as much data as possible of your guests in order to choose the best option for them.
Of course, it will also be important to know if this service is profitable in your establishment or if it is not worth offering. Do you want to know all aspects of in-room dining? So keep reading.
What is in-room dining?
Imagine being in a hotel room, dressed in your big fluffy bathrobe between your crisp white cotton perfectly ironed sheets. Don’t you feel like a snack? Perhaps a good dinner? You check the menu on the table and choose what most appeals to you. It’s time to pick up the phone and order your meal.
In-room dining in a hotel consists of meeting the needs of the guests without them having to go to the hotel reception. Of course, these needs center around food and drink.
In 5-star hotels, we can even find more premium in-room dining, the ‘room cooking service’. The hotel makes available to the guest a chef with the assistance of a waiter so that he cooks in his own room in the presence or not of the client.
It is one of the aspects of hotels that you need to know if you work or are thinking of working in the tourism industry.
How does in-room dining work in hotels?
The operation is quite simple. The guest must communicate by phone with the hotel reception and ask for the items on the menu that he most desires. Within a few minutes (depending on what you ordered, of course), the hotel staff running this service will deliver the food to your doorstep.
Although the telephone is the most common means of communication, some hotels have opted for digital technology. Thus, the order can be made directly from the hotel’s own mobile application.
Depending on the accommodation policy, this in-room service will have one schedule or another. 24-hour services are more likely to be found in 4 and 5 star hotels. On the other hand, in smaller hotels, the number of employees will be lower and it will not be as easy to attend to orders at night. Of course, you can always complement the in-room dining with vending machines or the minibars available in the rooms.
In many cases, it is more advisable to shorten the number of hours during which in-room dining service is offered than to provide poor service. Quantity is not synonymous with quality. And, in the case of offering it 24 hours a day, it is essential to take maximum care of the service and not lengthen waiting times.
The new in-room service
The reality is that in-room dining service in recent years has decreased considerably. Travelers have changed their habits and needs and the appearance of new technologies has forced hotels to reinvent in-room dining.
Guests are very used to ordering food delivered to their own homes, which is why many hotels have opted to establish agreements with food-delivery companies so that they can enjoy their favorite dishes without leaving their hotel room.
As we have already mentioned, in-room dining reinvents itself: rooms equipped with kitchens, product purchase service, integration of food delivery services on the hotel website… And of course, web apps that allow guests to order in an easy, fast, and handy way food directly from their smartphone, like the in-room dining service ordering system from Goguest.
In-room dining can be ideal for hotels in locations with few restaurants, for business travelers with very limited hours, for guests with reduced mobility… Everything will depend on the type of establishment and the profile of the guest. That is why it is vitally important to have all the possible data that will allow you to get to know your customers as much as possible.
