Hotel Dining Apps: The Secret to Boosting Profit & Guest Satisfaction
Today’s guests demand autonomy and convenience. Hotels are challenged to provide information and services that suit their guests when they need them most. Hoteliers have found an increasing demand for in-room and mobile dining, and those who have been able to provide this service have seen a great return on investment.
Let’s explore how hoteliers and guests alike are benefitting.
Convenience is key
A dining app for in-room and hotel dining enhances the guest experience by providing guests with a high-tech and immersive way of ordering and paying – with added privacy and convenience. Hotel dining apps, which don’t require a download (guests simply scan a QR code to access the information via their smartphones web browser), will help create a memorable and efficient experience for your guests while they stay and dine at your hotel.
“We now live in a society where most of the younger generation do everything on their phones and prefer to self-serve online, so mobile dining is ideal for these guests.
With it being an airport hotel, in-room dining is perfect for weary travellers that don’t want to get dressed up for dinner (or converse with people) and prefer to relax in the comfort of their rooms. Guests enjoy the convenience and ease of enjoying a meal in their rooms like they are at home.”
Mobile Dining Apps boost hotel ancillary revenue
Giving your guests the option to choose an online dining experience during their stay (along with a seamless and enticing booking platform) will boost your F&B ancillary revenue – with many of our partner hotels generating up to 40-50% additional monthly revenue after implementing our dining app.
The range of items is displayed on the digital menu (categorised, priced and easily filterable according to a guest’s allergens, intolerances and preferences) and guests have the time to peruse the menus from the comfort of their device, wherever they are on your property.
Within the dining app, hotels can also upsell and cross-sell. This not only leads to an increase in the volume of orders but also in the average check size.
Hotel dining apps allow the hotel to track and identify trends in guest interests and preferences that can be used to provide a more unique service by personalising offers and designing menus based on past stays and sales figures.
“The platform gives us many options to maximise revenue across our resort and enhance the guest experience.
With the simple and seamless ordering platform, in-room sales and average check size have soared by 40%, and the return on investment is significant.
Many of our guests feel more comfortable ordering online [compared to phoning through an order] and tend to order more per transaction as it’s ‘guilt-free’ ordering and eliminates judgement!”
“For a premium resort, we wanted to give our guests options, including having their meals or a pre-dinner cocktail in their luxurious suites – if they prefer more privacy or want to enjoy a more informal, relaxed dining experience, the choice is theirs.
It has helped us boost our F&B ancillary income and drive guest spend from our gastronomic outlets with average check sizes rising 39% year on year.
With the IRIS app, we provide our guests with a first-class and efficient service befitting of a 5-star luxury resort that enriches their stay - and by providing this facility, it ultimately contributes to them re-booking with us again.”
Dining apps help hoteliers become more sustainable
Unlike paper versions, the app allows you to customise in-room dining menus and easily update the information digitally. Mobile dining apps are more sustainable, allowing hoteliers to avoid printing and re-printing menus whenever a change is needed or when the current ones are no longer presentable - you only have to print the QR code once and it never needs to be updated! Can you imagine how many times a poolside menu has to be replaced?!
“We want to provide our guests with a sustainable, digital experience that will enhance their stay and give them everything they need.
The IRIS app enables us to reduce waste and decrease our reliance on paper menus, brochures, and directories. We can provide all the guest information online which can be updated at a click of a button thereby eliminating the need for any printed material and making considerable financial and environmental savings.”
Mobile dining apps improve guest experience and free up staff time
The benefits of mobile dining aren’t limited to increased revenue. It also frees up resources for the hotel and lightens the staff workload. Automation makes the ordering process more streamlined within the app.
Guest orders are sent directly to the kitchen and bar, where staff can start creating the dishes and drinks as soon as the orders arrive. The wait staff have more free time as they do not need to take orders and can focus on serving tables/rooms – both of these decrease overall customer wait time.
If the kitchen is overwhelmed, there is an option for staff to control the volume of orders coming in during busy periods or even turn off orders when they need to.
“IRIS’s web-based mobile app has reduced our employee’s workload, amplified our response time, and boosted the guest experience.
With no waiting time or queues, and guests self-ordering, orders are managed more efficiently and delivered quicker. Delivery times have been reduced by 5 minutes per order enhancing the guest experience and enabling staff to focus on other tasks or guest needs.
IRIS has, without a doubt, accelerated our operations and allowed us to add a modern, yet interactive touch to the mobile dining experience we provide our guests.”
“Mobile dining is a huge benefit to us, the biggest improvement being guest satisfaction. With quicker, more accurate meal orders we are exceeding guest expectations and enriching their stay.
Having automatic order-taking is a constant help to our teams - it has lightened the load on our Guest Services team and helped alleviate and reduce our staffing challenges.
With the orders placed online, going direct to the kitchen to be processed and then delivered, the hotel is lowering delivery times by 10-15 minutes.”
The bottom line
Guest experience demands are changing, and hoteliers must adapt to suit their needs. Bringing their dining experience online via a mobile dining app will help hotels and their staff meet these increasingly high expectations and demands.
As you will have read throughout this article, our hotel partners have had great success with the IRIS dining app which offers more than just dining services - find out what other services we have helped our clients improve by reading more of our case studies or get in touch with us here to start your journey.
