Midscale hotels with F&B are more frequently looking to partner with established brands to keep people eating at the hotel.

Three
squares meals a day may be necessary, but just ask the typical midscale
hotelier how their restaurant is doing and from looking at their empty
restaurant it may seem to them that folks don’t eat at all. It’s a
plaguing problem that just isn’t getting better.

The root cause of the problem is twofold: Hoteliers are not
restaurateurs, often creating a subpar product. And with so many hotel
food outlets pumping out less than stellar food, lodging executives
have basically trained a generation of travelers to simply ignore the
hotel restaurant in favor of heading offsite to an established brand
name venue.

And even midscale hotels with restaurants that are good are probably
losing business because of this now deeply instilled ethos. No wonder
the biggest trend in the midscale segment is building hotels sans
dining outlets.

In the first nine months of 2009, demand for midscale with F&B was
down 12.5 percent, while occupancy was down 11.1 percent, according to
Smith Travel Research. OK, so part of the problem is these are
typically older properties, but experts agree that in many cases it’s
the restaurant that’s dampening profit potential.

More than ever hoteliers are seeking out third party providers to come
in with an established brand to rejuvenate the property’s F&B
department. Hoteliers see it as a catch-all solution that would help
goose outside business to come for a meal, while also creating
something palatable and desirable for hotel guests.

At the Best Western Brandon Hotel and Conference Center in Tampa, the hotel had a flagging restaurant and nightclub business. 
“Before, we’d get like two people for lunch and 20 people for dinner.
Then maybe 100 would come and dance. It didn’t really work for hotel
operations,” said owner Chris Lewis. Then they put in the established
chain Beef ‘O’Brady’s, family sports pubs with more than 260 locations
throughout the Southeast and the Midwest.

Now they are bringing in between 250-300 for lunch and then again for
dinner. “We realized we needed to put something in to attract the
consumer. You need brand name these days. It’s exceeding our
expectations and that has been great,” said Lewis. “We did $26,000 in
one week recently. More important, working with a strong partner brand
is helping us to build market share. And it’s helping to lift both ADR
and occupancy.”

“For many hotel operators, food and beverage can be five percent of
their sales, but 95 percent of their headaches,” said David Mansbach,
HVS Executive Search Co-President North America, who has more than 15
years of experience in the chain restaurant and chain lodging
industries. “By bringing in Beef ‘O’ Brady’s – an established brand
with operating systems already in place – hotel operators can stand out
from the crowd and increase the potential of their F&B offerings.”

In fact, it worked so well for the hotel, the Best Western brought in
another concept called Rick's Café, which is a New York-style deli and
pizza concept. They even bring in their pizza dough from Brooklyn.

Nick Vojnovic, President of Beef ‘O’ Brady’s restaurants, said it’s not
unusual for hotel restaurants to bleed gallons of red ink.  “We have
seen a lot of hotels on the restaurant side lose $100,000 to $200,000 a
year on a restaurant in established hotel brands like Holiday Inn or
Radisson. There is a power of having a branded restaurant because
consumers no longer are choosing to eat at a generic restaurant,” he
said.

The Tradewinds resort in St. Petersburg, FL, had a generic sports bar
that made about $700,000 a year. After replacing the space with an
established name brand, they’re reaping the rewards to the tune of $4
million a year.

Meanwhile back at the Best Western Brandon, they’re selling chicken
wings and beer on Friday and Saturday nights for weekend comedy shows
that are pulling in a lot more people and money than the nightclub ever
did. “This has been fantastic for us. At the end of day there are not a
lot of things to keep people here on site, but this has been a major
success,” said Lewis.

By: Glenn Haussman

Source: Hotel Interaktive