Driving Business
Capitalising on every opportunity during the evening affair seems to be where most hotels succeed in achieving their targets for the month. The team at Jebel Ali Golf Resort & Spa drives business using every facet of its food and beverage division.
Outside catering, family tents on the beach, iftar in the main restaurant and their newest addition, Divaz — a floating venue that cruises the ocean — all provide options for families, corporate companies, UAE residents and in house guests.
“Compared to the previous month, we see an increase of about 10% to 15% in covers if we combine restaurants and the outside catering events we do during the holy month of Ramadan,” explains Ralph J. Hayes, director of food and beverage.
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Similarly, Andreas Mueller, GM of Taj Palace Hotel in Dubai, classified as a
‘dry hotel’, has seen a positive impact year-on-year for iftar with covers and revenue doubling from 2009 to 2010.
The trend is region-wide, with Thierry Perrot, general manager of InterContinental Cairo Citystars also reporting an increase: “Revenue increased on average by around 12% in 2010 as well as the number of covers increasing [in 2010 vs 2009] by around 17% for both food and beverage, and banqueting.”
InterContinental’s counterpart at Festival City, Dubai also has big plans and while certain outlets do close, the team is confident that effective planning will pay off: “We create a five-hundred-seat outlet so that helps easily with the closure of the other outlets,” explains John Philip Rees, executive assistant manager, food and beverage.
He continues: “We’re working with a local company and we have some sponsorship lined up. From a profitability standpoint, we analyse the Ramadan tent in line with our normal outlet budget profitably percentages and it delivers about the same.”
Raffles Hotel in Dubai witnesses significant success with its approach to repeat business as Andrew Whiffen, executive chef explains: “We’re lucky to have an extremely skilled Arabic kitchen team who do a very traditional iftar and suhour.
Because we get a lot people who come to us on a daily basis for iftar, we work on a six menu cycle so certain items are there daily, but other items change on a daily basis which we’ve found very successful. ”
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