A wedding feast to remember

Weddings contribute a significant percentage to a venue’s F&B revenue, but with budgets tightening, what can operators do to stay ahead of the game?

The time has come for F&B managers to take stock and review the competitiveness and operational efficiency of their wedding packages.

Many operators have reported a slow summer, in part due to the current economic climate and to the timing of Ramadan this year. Seasonal trends should see demand return next month, but with large revenues at stake, operators should now take the opportunity to review the current market trends and ensure that their offerings are competitively positioned.

In some cases, the average wedding spend has decreased, whilst customer expectations have remained steadfast. Therefore, it has become essential to develop high-quality F&B offerings that are priced to maximise revenue without impacting upon the guest experience.

“The market has changed rapidly over the past two years,” explained Ritz-Carlton, Dubai director of F&B, Wael Maatouk. “People are seeking out more value, with smaller budgets to serve the same luxury experience.”

By default, the Ritz-Carlton in Dubai is naturally more exposed to slower summers because the majority of its wedding clientele is drawn from the local expatriate community. Maatouk predicts that business will peak between October and April with more than 60 events in the pipeline.

With a stronger focus on Emirati weddings and as the preferred venue for Royal weddings, Dubai World Trade Centre experiences strong year-round demand. In the first two quarters of 2010 alone it reported a 21% increase in wedding trade — especially at the high-end of the market.

However, it has also noted its clients becoming more budget-conscious, as Dubai World Trade Centre weddings manager, Najah Al Mullah revealed.

“For us, the customer spend has remained consistent, but clients are now operating within more of a set budget and are therefore making fewer special requests. However overall, the wedding business in the UAE is booming and still provides a substantial contribution to our F&B revenues.”

Bespoke Products

A key challenge for operators is to offer a competitively priced wedding product which can adapt around the individual needs of the client without escalating the cost. Most hotels achieve this by offering a basic package that their clients are able to modify to suit their needs and their available budget.

“We have a standard menu selection which our clients can choose from — ranging from the traditional to the bespoke,” explained Al Faisaliah Hotel and Hotel Al Khozama director of marketing, Khaled Al-Idrissi. “However, we can tailor our packages to the clients’ requirements and are able to modify our menus to suit the tastes of the wedding party.”

Offering customised and bespoke wedding arrangements does not come without problems for operators. Weddings are emotionally charged events that require input from a number of people — unless clear lines of communication are established early on, operators can soon find themselves embroiled in family disagreements.

“You should ask the bride and groom to assign one person to communicate with the hotel,” suggested Al-Idrissi. “This helps us to overcome a common issue: the differences in opinion between the families on how the wedding should be orchestrated and implemented.”

Regardless of how much planning has gone into an event, last minute changes will always be an issue. Most operators across the region factor this into their planning by ensuring that clear rules about last minute changes are firmly established early on and resources are readily available if required.

At the Four Seasons Hotel in Riyadh, weddings account for nearly 40% of the F&B revenue, so the need to respond effectively to last minute changes is strategically important to the business.

“The most common last minute request is for us to change the set up of the ballroom,” explained assistant director of catering, Mohamed Emam. “For every event, we have to be confident that we can achieve this, so we ensure that an on-site team for the ballroom is always available to make any necessary changes.

“We also see a lot of special menu requests, so our chef together with the culinary team can modify any menu and source the ingredients up to 72 hours before the wedding,”added Emam.

Quality Service

Wedding events place extra demand on the business’s human resource, and implementing a flexible staffing solution can pose real difficulties for operators.

Venues with consistent year-round demand for weddings can recruit a large permanent team, but for many operators weddings are only part of their portfolio. Recruiting casual labour for the event can present quality issues and stretching the business’s existing human resources may prove to be logistically difficult.

One cost-effective solution is to streamline the operation and ensure a smooth service on the day.

“Emirati weddings are much larger than western ones, ranging from 1000 to more than 6000 guests,” explained Dubai World Trade Centre’s Al Mullah. “For these larger weddings, the coordination and communication between the production and operation teams is vital.

“We plan down to the very last detail and assign two dedicated service staff to each table. We also strategically set up service stations to ensure timely and efficient service to the guests. The service time for a 6000 person seated wedding ranges from between 20-25 minutes.”

In the region’s more conservative countries, there are even more factors to consider when developing a human resource strategy. For example, providing service for large wedding parties in countries like Saudi Arabia where males and females are separated can pose logistical problems, as Four Seasons Riyadh’s Mohamed Emam explained.

“We were once required to provide service for more than 1500 female guests,” he said. “It was a seated dinner, which requires more staff anyway, but in Riyadh it was necessary to bring in more female members of staff to perform the service.”

With the wedding season fast-approaching, the challenge for F&B operators now is to devise a strategy to maximise revenue in a changing market: budgets are tightening, clients are seeking out value, staff and food costs are climbing ... but guests are still demanding the same luxury experience.

How will you give your guests a wedding feast to remember?