13:00: Random fact of the day from Caterer's Charlie Lyon who's just been chatting to Harold from the Dubai World Trade Centre: In the World Trade Centre when catering to large events such as weddings the team cooks up to 50 camels and 1000 lambs per day! Nice thought just as we sit down to lunch.

14:00: The first panel of the afternoon looks at 'Recouping ever-increasing costs' with moderator ITP's Louise Oakley and on the panel: Simon Lazarus, senior area director of F&B, Hilton Worldwide, Sumeet Jinghan, country operations manager for Qatar and Kuwait, Foodmark; Gus Moustakas, executive chef Grand Millennium Al Wahda and Ryan Hattingh, international operations director, Gaucho. 

It's not long before the question 'should I be using flash-sales sites/group-buying sites to boost volume? comes up, and most of our experts answer 'no' .

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Hattingh: "We’ve never done it and probably never will. It generates the business for a short while – depends on the level of business and what market you operate in but it attracts a crowd who won’t always come back. Our strategy has not been to discount but enhance quality and the value you give to people. It’s proved a much healthier strategy for us for us in terms of longevity."

Lazarus: "Discounting is a long and slippery slope. In terms of going out there and giving 50% off it’s not something we’d do unless we had a really dwindling restaurant and needed to increase volume, such as in a crisis situation."

Moustakas: Once you open that door you can't close it and you have to think - is that the clientele I want? Or are they only going to come back when I discount. You get a reputation for discounting. 

 

15:00: iConsulthotels' Martin Kubler takes the stage as moderator for the panel on the popular topic of 'Social media marketing'. He welcomes Felita Figueredo, assistant digital marketing manager for Jumeirah Group; John Hayes, entertainment manager, McGettigan's, Bonnington Jumeirah Lakes Towers and Tiina-Maija Bergman, managing partner of Table4ME (who's kindly standing in for Ian Ohan, area developer GCC, N_K_D Pizza who unfortunately could not make it).

Figueredo says restaurants should stop obsessing over fan numbers and get a strategy, after all who needs 100,000 fans if you're not going to bother telling them anything?

"A lot of people get into social media because their competitors are on there. They think 'I should be on there too', but that’s a mistake. What’s your strategy? Do you know what you want to do with your fans? One of the challenges now is there are so many channels – do I have to be on all of them? It’s about looking at your fans and channels and using them to help your brand."