Hotels are constantly seeking innovative ways to enhance guest experiences while increasing revenue – and summer time is
no exception!
By capitalising on the allure of outdoor settings and creating a unique culinary experience with a seamless online ordering platform, hotels can tap into an additional revenue stream during these warmer months. In this blog, we consider how hotels can leverage poolside dining and mobile dining apps to maximise their profits and elevate guest satisfaction.
Why Hoteliers Should Activate Online Poolside Dining
Every hotelier wants to deliver a frictionless experience that satisfies the modern guests’ desires. With today’s guests demanding an instantaneous and self-serve experience, here’s why you should implement online poolside dining:
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Maximise the potential of your property – With summer fast approaching, hoteliers can drive revenue across pool decks and beach areas. Offering poolside dining reduces the friction of leaving the area to order or having to flag down a waiter. Parents may be more inclined to order if they do not have to get the children out of the pool or have someone watch them while they order. The thirsty sunbather may browse the menu and order a refreshing drink, without ever leaving their sunbed!
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Maximise the return on your resources – Hotels can manage orders online rather than having staff members take guest orders. This will reduce the need for a large physical staff presence and lower the stress on your team, enabling hotels to manage vast pool areas, process large order volumes and spend more time delivering an exceptional customer service to guests.
How Hoteliers Can Get Summer-Ready & Drive Poolside Profits
Summer is the busy season all hoteliers look forward to. To deliver the best guest experience, you must ensure that your teams and resources are ready to meet the increased demand from guests during their stay. Let’s take a look at how you can get summer-ready:-
Implement an online ordering platform
Make the most of your dining services by introducing an online ordering platform or expanding your existing one to include poolside delivery. Guests can order food and beverages to be delivered to their desired location, and use other services such as the hiring of cabanas, or making a table reservation for dinner.
It’s also important to promote the use of your platform which can be done by displaying QR codes (linked to your digital menu) throughout your poolside lounging area, on each sunbed, or cabana, and when guests first check-in.
Specially curated menus
Enhance the poolside dining experience by offering tempting food and drinks that your guests crave and are simple for your hotel to fulfil on scale – canned cocktails are a particular favourite!
This means eliminating food items and drinks that are commonly associated with colder seasons and incorporating fresh, light, and seasonal ingredients to create a menu that compliments the poolside atmosphere. From refreshing salads and wraps to grilled seafood and signature cocktails, the menu should be carefully crafted to enhance the outdoor dining experience. Your guests are on holiday, after all!
Platform-exclusive promotions and packages
Through your online platform, you can easily display exclusive promotions and special summer offers. Offering special packages through your app will entice guests into spending more which helps increase revenue. With a mobile dining app, it is easy to chop and change these promotions throughout the season – daily, weekly, or however you please.
You will likely see an increase in app usage if you include a call-to-action referencing the summer offers on the QR codes placed around the hotel – ‘Download & order on our app for summer discounts’.
Unique dining concepts to drive spending
Keep your guests interested through unique dining concepts for all to enjoy by the pool. These can range from having BBQs, tapas, and cocktail hours for your guests to look forward to and enjoy. Keeping your guests on their toes with unique dining concepts will entice them to return for poolside dining, which in turn will drive guest spending.
You could consider having a themed lunch that changes every day – many resorts and multiple-outlet hotels favour this.
Beautiful imagery and description
You’ve gone through all that effort to create amazing food and drinks for your guests to enjoy, but simply listing the menu items is not enough! When browsing online, it is often the pictures that sell – not the text. Ensuring that you have high-quality images that showcase your menu, along with accurate, enticing descriptions, will increase orders and upells.
