Restaurants should not be an after thought in hotels anymore!
- Scott Valentine
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
There was a time when the restaurant was the beating heart of the hotel.
Not the lobby.Not the spa.Not the room.
The restaurant.
For much of the 20th century, hotels were not just places to sleep. They were the social centers of cities. Business deals were made in the dining room, weddings celebrated in ballrooms, and political conversations happened late into the night at the hotel bar.
The grand hotels of Europe and Ameri
ca built their reputations not only on luxury rooms but on legendary dining rooms and kitchens. Think of establishments like The Savoy in London, The Ritz in Paris, or Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Their restaurants were destinations in their own right. Locals filled the tables as much as travelers did.
In those days, Food & Beverage was not seen as a secondary department. It was a core economic engine of the property.
In many full-service hotels, Food & Beverage contributed 40–50% of the hotel’s total revenue, sometimes even more in urban luxury properties. Large banquets, destination restaurants, iconic bars, and daily dining created constant traffic. The hotel was alive from early morning breakfasts to late-night cocktails.
F&B created energy.Energy created reputation.Reputation drove room demand.
The system worked.
When Hotels Became Real Estate
Over the past 25 years, the hotel business slowly began to change.
Developers and investors increasingly started viewing hotels less as hospitality institutions and more as real estate assets.
And when real estate thinking enters hospitality, the conversation shifts quickly toward rooms inventory and yield metrics.
Suddenly the most important numbers in the building became:
ADR – Average Daily RateRevPAR – Revenue Per Available RoomOccupancy
These metrics are important, of course. But as they became the dominant focus, many operators began treating Food & Beverage as a support service rather than a strategic driver.
Today, in many hotel portfolios, revenue distribution typically looks like this:
Rooms: 60–70% of total revenue
Food & Beverage: 20–30%
Other services: the remainder
From a spreadsheet perspective, this seems logical. Rooms have fewer variables. Once built, they are relatively predictable.
But hospitality is not built on predictability.
It is built on experience.
The Slow Decline of Hotel Restaurants
As hotels focused more heavily on rooms performance, the F&B departments often became victims of cost control rather than beneficiaries of strategic investment.
Restaurants were downsized.
Menus were simplified.
Staffing levels were cut.
Training budgets disappeared.
Instead of creating vibrant destination venues, many hotels adopted generic all-day dining outlets designed primarily to feed hotel guests rather than attract local customers.
Another shift occurred as well: the rise of third-party restaurant operators and celebrity chef partnerships.
While some of these partnerships produced iconic venues, many hotels essentially outsourced their identity. The restaurant belonged to the chef brand, not the hotel.
And when that happens, something subtle but important is lost.
The hotel stops being a culinary destination and becomes merely the building that hosts the restaurant.
The Middle East: A Unique Exposure
Nowhere is this imbalance more visible than in the Middle East.
Over the past two decades, the region has experienced one of the largest hotel development booms in modern history. Cities like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha built massive hospitality capacity in remarkably short periods of time.
But many of these projects were conceived primarily as real estate developments first and hospitality concepts second.
The key question often asked during development was:
“How many rooms can we build?”
Rarely was the first question:
“What experiences will bring people into this hotel?”
As a result, many properties opened with:
Large room inventories
Oversized banquet operations
Standardized all-day dining restaurants
Underdeveloped destination dining concepts
Yet the regional dining market outside hotels has exploded. Independent restaurants, lifestyle venues, and street-level dining concepts now dominate the social scene.
Hotels that once defined culinary culture in cities are now often chasing trends created elsewhere.
The Hidden Truth: Great F&B Drives Rooms
There is a misconception in many financial models that strong F&B operations are simply an added cost.
In reality, the opposite is often true.
Strong Food & Beverage operations create:
Brand recognition
Local foot traffic
Social energy
Media visibility
Guest loyalty
All of these factors influence room demand.
Guests increasingly choose hotels not simply for the room itself but for the experience surrounding it.
They want a rooftop bar.A buzzing restaurant.A breakfast worth waking up for.
The most successful lifestyle hotels understand this perfectly. Their bars are full of locals, their restaurants have waiting lists, and their public spaces are constantly alive.
The room becomes part of a much larger story.
The Future of Hotel F&B
Looking forward, hotels must rediscover something that earlier generations of hoteliers understood instinctively:
Hospitality is not about selling rooms.It is about creating places people want to gather.
For Food & Beverage to regain its rightful place in hotels, three shifts need to happen.
1. Restaurants Must Become Destinations Again
Hotel restaurants must attract the city, not just hotel guests.
If locals are not filling the tables, the concept is not strong enough.
2. Bars Must Become Social Engines
Historically, the hotel bar was one of the most powerful social spaces in any city. That energy must return.
Great bars generate atmosphere that spills throughout the property.
3. Kitchens Must Become Part of the Experience
The future of hospitality is experiential.
Open kitchens, live fire cooking, chef interaction, and visible craft create the theatre that modern diners seek.
Guests no longer want hidden production kitchens. They want to see the action.
The Opportunity Ahead
The irony is that the opportunity for hotel Food & Beverage has never been greater.
Travelers today are more interested in food culture than ever before. Culinary tourism is growing globally, and dining experiences often rank among the top motivations for travel.
Hotels that reinvest in F&B will not simply increase restaurant revenue. They will increase the overall desirability of the property.
Rooms will sell because the hotel has life.
A Simple Reminder
Hotels were never meant to be silent buildings full of beds.
They were designed as places where people gathered — to eat, drink, celebrate, negotiate, and connect. At the center of that gathering was always the kitchen.
And perhaps the future of hospitality lies not in new technology or new financial models, but in remembering something very old:
When the kitchen is alive, the hotel is alive.
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