The biggest opportunity for hoteliers looking to grow their ancillary revenues is in food and beverage, according to a recent debate between sales and marketing experts.
The hoteliers agreed that with pricing one of the main challenges in 2011, increasing revenues from avenues other than rooms was vital — and said that local marketplaces such as Dubai offered many opportunities for growth.
Ibn Battuta Gate and Royal Amwaj director of sales and marketing Andrew Hughes said: “The big priority for us will be addressing the opportunities to do with ancillary revenues inside the hotel. For years as hoteliers we’ve looked at room and then what happens next, but of course food and beverage plays a really important role in our hotels in Dubai because of the nature of the hotel in the society in which we live. So we almost have to look at our food and beverage outlets as separate business units, almost like gated attractions if you like and how we can maximise revenues from those avenues”.
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Colleague Beth Thomas, Ibn Battuta Gate marketing manager, cited the example of West 14th steakhouse at sister property Oceana on the The Palm Jumeirah, which has found success with an online reservations system.
“You can now book your table online. This is easier for the client and it includes the local community and that’s something we shouldn’t forget. We’ve got guests on the ancillary side of the hotel industry which is becoming more and more important,” said Thomas.
She said the hotel also conducted an online marketing campaign for its Chinese New Year event in February.
“Now the ROI on that came up to about eight times the incremen just on a simple online campaign, just simply by engaging the local community ad word of mouth,” said Thomas.
Emaar Hospitality Group LLC vice president sales and marketing Amit Arora commented: “I agree with you, the biggest opportunity to grab is really the food and beverage marketing to the local community. If you have a successful food and beverage offering you have a successful hotel.
“If you can’t crack you’re food and beverage offerings in this competitive market...I’ve seen over and over again that hotels tend to lack the attention they deserve so a lot of our emphasis is really on food and beverage marketing, it’s about embracing the local community, bringing them in.
“Of course ‘destination Downtown Dubai has more than 50 restaurants in our portfolio and there’s inter-company competition now between which restaurants are doing better but as long as their offering is right and we can talk to our customers directly and engage them, that’s when you start seeing the returns and that’s one of our biggest priorities,” said Arora.
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