Food Delivery Apps are the new OTAs – and they are quietly eating your hotel’s F&B revenue

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The Next Great Revenue Leak

The hospitality industry learned a painful lesson from online travel agencies (OTAs). What began as a convenient distribution channel evolved into a structural tax on hotel revenue, with commissions climbing from 10% to 15-30% and beyond. Today, hotels pay US$50 billion annually in commissions to the three largest OTAs. That money could have funded renovations, staff training, or competitive rates – instead, it flows to third‑party platforms that now control the relationship with the guest.

Now history is repeating itself. This time, the battleground is not room bookings – it is Food & Beverage.

Delivery apps like UberEats, DoorDash, and GrabFood have perfected the playbook OTAs wrote. They offer convenience. They capture demand. And then they monetise that demand through commissions that start at 15% and often approach 30–40% of every order once all fees are stacked.

For hotels, the cost is devastating – not just in lost revenue, but in lost guest relationships. And worse, hoteliers are inviting these platforms into their buildings, because guests are using them from their rooms.

1. The OTA Playbook – Now Applied to Food

The parallels between OTAs and delivery apps are not accidental. Both exploit the same structural weakness: hotels have outsourced their digital customer interface.

Twenty years ago, hotels controlled their own distribution. Guests called directly or walked in. Then OTAs offered something hotels could not easily replicate: a seamless, searchable, comparative marketplace. In exchange for access to this demand, hotels agreed to pay commissions – initially modest (around 10%), but over time, rates climbed.

Today, the average OTA commission ranges from 15% to 30%+! Programs like preferred placements, visibility boosters, and partner tiers add extra costs on top. The OTA commission is no longer just a fee – it is a structural tax that has fundamentally altered hotel profitability.

2. The Cannibalisation Crisis: Delivery Apps Are Stealing In‑House Guests

The most damaging aspect of delivery apps is not the commission – it is that they are substituting for, not adding to, your existing F&B revenue.

2.1. The Shift from In‑Room Dining to Delivery

A notable trend is emerging in hotel F&B: in‑room dining (IRD) is increasingly popular, but hotels are failing to capture it. Industry observers report that “the most consistently performing (and often ignored) revenue stream in the F&B Division is In‑room Dining,” with guests across brands and property types increasingly choosing to dine in their rooms rather than in hotel restaurants. This is driven by factors such as the desire for privacy after busy meetings, growing affinity for OTT content, and the appeal of “comfort food” after indulgent meals.

Yet despite this clear guest preference, many hotel F&B heads view IRD as “cannibalising their restaurants”, which is a shortsighted view. The result is that in‑house guests, already in the building, already hungry, are turning to third‑party apps because the hotel’s own IRD offering is poorly marketed, difficult to access, or lacks menu appeal.

The integration of restaurant aggregators and ordering platforms only further compounds this. The introduction of restaurant aggregators only further compounds this, with in‑house guests having no qualms in ordering their meals online to the hotel.

2.2. The Data Black Hole

When a guest orders through UberEats from their hotel room, the platform collects:

The guest’s name, location, and contact information
Their order history and preferences
Their payment details and spending patterns
Their ratings and feedback

Your hotel collects: nothing but extra work for the housekeeping team that has to dispose of the trash.

The hotel has no access to this data. The guest relationship belongs to UberEats, not to you. The hotel cannot remarket to that guest, cannot offer them a loyalty incentive, cannot personalise their next stay. Every delivery app order is a one‑time transaction that builds the platform’s competitive advantage – not yours.

2.3. The Quality and Consistency Gap

Hotels pride themselves on curated F&B experiences. Delivery apps offer no such curation. A guest can order from any restaurant within delivery radius – regardless of quality, safety standards, or brand alignment with your property.

This creates a quality consistency problem. A guest who has a poor experience with a third‑party delivery meal consumed in your hotel may associate that poor experience with your hotel – not with the app. The brand damage accrues to you, while the platform captures the transaction fee.

3. The Hidden Costs No One Talks About

Beyond commissions and data loss, delivery apps impose a cascade of hidden costs on hotels.

3.1. Labour Inefficiency

When a guest orders through an app, the hotel’s F&B team receives no order. The kitchen sits idle. The front desk fields no call. But the hotel’s fixed costs – rent, utilities, staff salaries – remain unchanged.

Worse, hotel F&B teams often end up serving delivery orders anyway – not for their own menus, but for third‑party orders that require staging, handover to drivers, and guest coordination. This is labour spent on someone else’s revenue.

3.2. Guest Friction

Delivery apps introduce friction into the guest experience that hotels cannot control:

The guest must leave the hotel lobby or coordinate a meeting point with a driver
The food may arrive cold, late, or incorrect – and the hotel cannot fix it
The guest receives no support from hotel staff for delivery issues

Delivery orders that go wrong become hotel problems – without hotel solutions.

4. The Solution: A Direct Mobile Ordering Offensive

The only sustainable response is to bring ordering back in‑house. Hotels must offer a direct, digital ordering experience that is so seamless, so convenient, and so compelling that guests choose it over third‑party apps.

4.1. QR‑Code Ordering: Zero Friction, Zero Commissions

SABA’s mobile ordering platform lets guests order directly from their own device by scanning a QR code – no app download, no login screens, no friction. Menus are fully branded, multilingual, and easy to navigate. Orders flow directly to the kitchen or bar, reducing staff workload and eliminating manual entry errors.

The platform integrates with major POS systems including Oracle Simphony Cloud POS and Shiji Infrasys Cloud POS, ensuring that orders appear instantly on kitchen screens. It also connects to leading job‑dispatch systems such as FCS1, Hotelkit, HubOS, Knowcross, Optii, Quore, etc, allowing guest requests and dining orders to be managed through a single unified dashboard.

4.2. Proven Results: Higher Revenue, Happier Guests

Properties using direct mobile ordering are seeing transformative results.

Amora Hotel Jamison Sydney implemented SABA’s mobile ordering solution and saw average order value increase by 30+% – from $32.50 to $44 per order. This was driven by guests having full control of their orders and the platform’s in‑built upselling mechanics.

Ingot Hotel Perth deployed QR‑based mobile ordering across its property, resulting in a $11.50 increase in average check. Guests could browse menus, personalise orders, and place room service requests directly from their own devices – eliminating friction and improving accuracy.

More broadly, industry data shows that hotels using digital ordering solutions report 15–30% higher average check values, save 3–5 minutes per order, and achieve up to 25% reduction in frontline labour needs.

When guests order directly, the entire revenue stays in the hotel. Zero commissions. Zero data leakage. Zero lost relationships.

4.3. What Hotels Are Realising

Forward‑thinking hoteliers are waking up to the threat. The same logic that drove the direct booking movement – “own the guest relationship, reduce distribution costs” – now applies equally to F&B.

Hotels that succeed in this new environment will be those that:

Make in‑house ordering effortless – QR codes in every room, at every table, by every pool lounger
Optimise the IRD experience – fast delivery, creative menus, premium presentation
Upsell intelligently – using digital prompts to suggest add‑ons, upgrades, and cross‑sell activities
Capture guest data – building guest profiles that enable personalisation and loyalty incentives

5. The Cost of Doing Nothing

Every hotel that fails to implement a direct mobile ordering strategy will continue to lose F&B revenue to delivery apps – not occasionally, but systematically and increasingly.

Consider a 200‑room hotel with 65% occupancy. If just 10% of guests order one delivery meal per stay at an average value of $25, the hotel loses over $100,000 annually to delivery apps. That does not account for lost upsell revenue, lost data, or the long‑term erosion of brand loyalty.

Manual systems designed for occasional use are forced to handle peak demand – and fail. Third‑party delivery is not occasional anymore. It is a mainstream guest behaviour that is here to stay.

The question is not whether guests will order food to their rooms. The question is: will they order from you, or from your competitors via a delivery app?

Data‑Driven Takeaways for Hoteliers

If your hotel still relies on phone orders or allows third‑party delivery apps to operate unchecked, you are:

Cannibalising your own in‑room dining by offering an inferior ordering experience
Handing over guest data to platforms that will use it to compete with you
Surrendering the guest relationship at the very moment they are most engaged
Funding the next generation of OTAs that will extract even more value from your business

The solution is not to ban delivery apps – that is impractical and guest‑unfriendly. The solution is to make your own mobile ordering experience so good that guests choose it first.

Conclusion: Break the Cycle. Own Your Guest.

The OTA wars taught the hospitality industry a painful lesson: never outsource the customer relationship. Hotels that built strong direct booking channels survived and thrived. Those that remained dependent on OTAs saw their margins erode year after year.

Delivery apps are the same story, repeating in real time. They offer convenience. They capture demand. And they will take away your F&B revenue for as long as you let them.

SABA’s mobile ordering platform is your defence. QR‑code ordering, seamless POS integration, intelligent upselling, and zero commissions. Every order stays in‑house. Every guest relationship stays yours. Every euro of revenue stays where it belongs – in your hotel.

Stop feeding the delivery apps. Start owning your F&B future.