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From champagne breakfast-in-bed to a 3am club sandwich, room service was once considered a marker of luxury in hotels. But for many, offering room service can be costly, operationally complex and not always profitable. According to the American Hotel and Lodging Association, only 22% of American hotels offered room service in 2016, a drop from 37% two years prior. With guests expectations and demands ever-changing, is room service as we know it on the way out? Food delivery apps have seen remarkable growth in the last few years. According to a recent report by Allied Market Research, the global food delivery app market was worth US$3.79bn in 2017 and is projected to rise to more than US$16bn by 2023. GrubHub is America’s biggest online food ordering service, with 115,000 restaurants across America cater to more than 19 million diners. In 2017, it collaborated with Hyatt Centric hotels to become part of their Restaurant to Go programme, which provides guests with an extensive choice of room service, including in-house dining and local takeouts. It differs from the standard GrubHub service by offering a more curated takeout menu with local restaurant recommendations by hotel staff. Launched in 2013 and available across Europe, Australia, Asia and the Middle East, UK-based app, Deliveroo has also penetrated the hotel industry as it seeks to increase its revenue from the corporate market. “We now work with hundreds of hotels and serviced apartments across our 14 markets and we expect to continue seeing strong growth in this service,” says Juan Diego Farah, Global Head of Deliveroo for Business. |
