Food and beverage

The luxury and lifestyle segment saw significant growth in 2023, driven by a healthy appetite for travel — and a willingness to spend on it. But what leisure travelers want out of their trips has changed. 

Increasingly, travelers are seeking experience-based trips, focusing more on the destination and its surrounding activities. Consumers are also increasingly prioritizing sustainable hotels and travel options. 

As these travel trends accelerate in 2024, hotels will adapt their food and beverage offerings to cater to changing guest demand and behavior, according to chef Stephen Toevs, Marriott International’s senior director of culinary for the U.S. and Canada. He shared with Hotel Dive the top culinary trends that will shape the future of the hospitality industry in 2024 and beyond. 

Less choice is more

In 2024, chefs will be asking themselves: “How can I make the dining experience memorable for the guests?” Offering a smaller, tailored menu is one way to do that, Toevs said.

This year, hotel restaurants will move to smaller a la carte offerings and even simplified prix fixe menus that emphasize local ingredients while minimizing costs, he said. This will encourage chefs to innovate their menus with seasonal ingredients and products already on hand. 

Consumers make endless decisions daily in regard to their work, home and family life, Toevs explained, so when it comes to eating at a restaurant, they want the process to be as seamless as possible. 

Also, for the chef, it’s easier to tell a story with a smaller menu, Toevs said. This, in turn, creates a unique experience for guests, something more and more luxury travelers are demanding. 

With a “less choice is more” mentality, chefs can streamline their menus and focus on ingredient execution and authenticity to create a holistic experience for the consumer. 

“What we want is guests to dine in a restaurant that is concepted properly, meaning the music's right, the design is right, the food matches the design and the decor, there's an overall theme that speaks to an experience,” he said. “Done are the days that we have these large, ‘Cheesecake Factory’ menus.”

Local ingredient sourcing

Another way chefs will cater to an increasing appetite for experience-based travel is through local ingredient sourcing. In 2024, Toevs forecasts, hotel restaurants will continue to “carefully curate” seasonal and local produce in their menus as a way to tell stories through dishes. 

Say a restaurant sources an heirloom beet from a local family farm. There’s a story that comes with that produce and gives insights into the surrounding destination’s climate or community, Toevs explained, which creates a more immersive experience for the guest. 

“We want our servers to storytell about our food and our ingredients,” Toevs said. “The only way to do that is to find those partnerships within the local community that [allow us to] not only support local farmers and suppliers, but also provide those storytelling opportunities within the menus.” 

One Marriott restaurant already integrating these practices is Bellpine at the newly opened Ritz-Carlton Portland, Toevs highlighted. 

At Bellpine, “the chef has done an awesome job of curating ingredients” to play on the surrounding destination’s forest, mountain and ocean climates, Toevs said. This includes sourcing mushrooms for various dishes, even desserts, and working with local fishermen to procure crab and salmon.  

The JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge Resort & Spa has also hopped on this trend, hosting “In the Garden” dinners with seasonal and local produce, Toevs said. He explained that the property has a long chef’s table situated within its on-site gardens, where the culinary team creates bespoke dinners for a few select guests at a time, using in-season ingredients and preparing them in unique ways each time. 

Plant-forward proteins  

The Ritz-Carlton Portland has also embraced another trend that Toevs sees ramping up across the hospitality industry in 2024: the use of mushrooms and other satiating meat substitutes to cater to a heightened demand for plant-based and sustainable dining options. 

Travelers want more sustainable options at hotels, and that includes within their dining concepts, Toevs said. In 2024, chefs will make mushrooms the focal point of meals in various ways, using them as protein substitutes, a coffee base or a smoothie ingredient. 

“Now, we're looking at vegetables at the center of the plate, and then we build our garnishes around it,” Toevs said. “Guests who are eating plant-based or plant-forward are looking for more substantial proteins, so in comes mushrooms, which can have that mouthfeel of a protein and also that umami flavor that's really rich and satisfying.” 

By adapting their food and beverage concepts, hotels could potentially boost their performance growth, Toevs said, adding that “there is a direct correlation” between room nights sold and the quality of the food and beverage offerings on-property. 

“If we have a really robust F&B program, not only are we going to see guests that want to repeat stay, but we're also going to have local guests who want to do a staycation,” he said.

Dive Brief:

• TGI Fridays has opened a restaurant inside the Hilton Garden Inn in Hollywood, California, the company said in a press release. 
• This is the second Fridays location within a property owned by RLJ Lodging Trust, a hotel investment company that also operates a full-sized Fridays attached to a Courtyard Marriott near Chicago’s Midway International Airport.
• Hotels are increasingly becoming a significant growth channel for Fridays, which said its restaurants attached to hotels have higher sales volumes than traditional streetside locations.

Dive Insight:

Previously TGI Fridays’ hotel restaurants were adjacent with connecting access. This new strategy is bringing the brand into hotels and converting “unbranded, underperforming restaurants,” Chris Delvin, chief development officer at TGI Fridays, said in an email to Restaurant Dive. These spaces can be converted in a few months compared to a new build that takes 12 to 18 months from site approval to opening, he said, adding that return on investment is expected to be favorable.

“There is massive white space for TGI Fridays within travel-driven locations, representing an incredible growth opportunity for our brand,” Delvin said in a press release. 

TGI Fridays used an existing restaurant space within the Hilton Garden Inn Hollywood to build its restaurant. The space is 4,000 square feet, features an outdoor patio and seats 150 guests, the press release said. The renovation was executed with Aimbridge Hospitality, a leading global hotel management company operating the Hilton Garden Inn Hollywood. 

TGI Fridays also has locations in airports and casinos, the press release said. It renovated a restaurant within the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport last year, and that location is on track to have the highest sales volume of any airport restaurant, TGI Fridays claimed. 

The opening of the non-traditional location in California comes months after the chain closed 36 underperforming corporate-owned restaurants. Within the past year, TGI Fridays also brought on a new CEO, appointed a U.S. president/COO and hired a CFO/president of international markets. The chain updated its menu last year with new entrees, appetizers, salads and other items. In April, it entered into a merger with its largest global franchisee, Hostmore, in a $220 million deal.

Hotel food and beverage revenues have declined in recent years, dropping by 72.5% in 2020, according to CBRE. Even after the worst of the pandemic passed, F&B revenues were still down, with CBRE estimating that 2022 annual F&B revenue would be 88.3% of 2019 levels. 

The hospitality industry professionals behind The Ramble Hotel in Denver, where the lobby is interchangeable with its Death & Co bar, are taking their expertise to the next level, debuting a brand that will specialize in cocktail-forward boutique hotels. 

Ryan Diggins, David Kaplan and Alex Day, the founders of cocktail bar brand Death & Co and The Ramble Hotel, launched vertically integrated lifestyle brand Midnight Auteur, which will span the ownership, development and operation of cocktail-anchored boutique hotels, according to a release. 

The founders launched Midnight Auteur with the goal of building and operating hotels that “immerse guests fully and seamlessly between social spaces and retreat — offering a setting fit for both celebration and sanctuary,” the release said. 

“We hold a deep, and slightly obsessive, reverence for the all-day lobby bar, which is really the foundation of Midnight Auteur,” Diggins said in a statement. “We love the idea of immersing our team and our guests in a vibrant, celebratory experience that only a hotel lobby bar can appropriately capture.”

Midnight Auteur will open its inaugural hotel, Municipal Grand, in Savannah, Georgia, in early 2025, the team announced. 

The luxury boutique hotel will offer 44 guest rooms along with a variety of food and beverage concepts, including a namesake lobby bar and restaurant that will “serve as the heartbeat of the property,” according to the release. The hotel will also include a rooftop lounge and pool and a subterranean bar. 

Revamped by locally based architect Lynch Associate Architects and its long-standing interior design partner AAmp Studio, the hotel’s design will be inspired by Savannah’s lush gardens and the building's existing mid-century qualities. 

The property’s cocktail focus will carry through to the guest rooms, which will include a minibar — stocked with a bespoke selection of spirits, premium coffee and teas and unique glassware and bar tools — as the focal point. 

Municipal Grand joins a slew of hotels opening in Savannah, as the market sees an uptick of luxury and lifestyle activity. A Ritz-Carlton property is set to open in the city later this year, and Hilton expanded its Curio Collection brand there as well.

Dive Brief:

• Hilton launched Stir Creative Collective, an in-house consultancy that will develop original food and beverage brands and concepts, the company announced. 
• Stir will provide a la carte services and commercial solutions to owners, operators and hotel teams in the Americas as well as Europe, the Middle East and Africa. 
• The hotel F&B landscape is evolving, as luxury and lifestyle hotels cast themselves as dining destinations and guests pivot away from room service. Stir is designed to help hotels meet the needs of hotel guests “with meaningful solutions that drive revenue and brand loyalty,” according to Chris Silcock, Hilton’s president of global brands and commercial services.

Dive Insight:

Stir offers a la carte services in strategy, concepting and branding. Those services include market studies and analysis, “holistic” multi-concept hotel and resort planning, original restaurant and bar concept development, menu creation, pre-opening support and marketing and public relations guidance. 

The collective has already completed several projects, including five restaurant and bar concepts each at the newly opened Conrad Orlando and Signia by Hilton Atlanta. The collective also worked with Hotel 1000 Seattle to open cocktail bar Rosebay and The Nineteenth, a TopGolf Swing Suite. 

The consultancy is “a leading-edge offering that marries the company’s global footprint with the team’s invaluable wealth of relevant experience designing and delivering extraordinary food and beverage destinations,” said Adam Crocini, Hilton’s SVP and global head of food and beverage brands, in a statement. Stir will “provide an end-to-end, turnkey experience that brings exceptional narratives to life,” he added.

Hilton also officially launched Hilton for Business, a hotel booking platform for small- and medium-sized business travelers that the company has been piloting since October.

When the American Hotel & Lodging Association launched its Responsible Stay program in 2022, major hotel brands — including InterContinental Hotel Group, Marriott International, Red Roof, Hyatt, Hilton and Choice International — committed to making meetings, events and guest experiences more environmentally and socially responsible. 

One of the four tenets of the initiative is waste reduction, including from hotel restaurants and kitchens. According to AHLA, global food waste accounts for 10% of greenhouse gasses — more than the aviation industry contributes — and the hotel industry alone produces 79,000 tons of food waste annually. 

Yet compared to other waste-reduction initiatives at hotels — properties are eliminating single-use plastic packaging, offering water bottle refill stations and rejecting plastic straws, for example — efforts in the kitchen have been slower to catch on due to logistical challenges. 

With sustainability still a top priority for many hotel groups, properties are looking at inventive ways to decrease food waste. Here’s how several hotels have incorporated food waste solutions into their operations.    

Using a ‘digester’

At the Spectator Hotel in Charleston, South Carolina, the property has a machine dedicated specifically to food waste reduction: a digester. 

The property has been using Recoup Technologies’ digester since 2018, when it launched its food waste diversion program. Hotel staff run half-eaten foods through the machine, which uses live microorganisms to break down organic leftovers and turn them into reusable water. That water then goes back into the sewer system. 

Since the hotel began using the digester, it has diverted over 61,000 pounds of food waste from landfills and created over 5,000 gallons of water. 

“The process is like composting, but instead of creating soil it creates water,” said Carlo Carroccia, the Spectator’s general manager.   

Incorporating the digester into the hotel’s workflows was relatively simple, Carroccia added. The staff separates food waste from recyclables and landfill waste, and throughout the day, the bin of discarded food is “fed” to the digester. 

“This is a low-cost investment for the hotel that really makes a big difference to the sustainability of our operations,” said Carroccia.  

Digesters vary in output according to their size, which can range from smaller machines for personal home use to industrial versions. Elsewhere in the hospitality industry, Carnival Cruises has also adopted the technology.  

Salvaging ‘slurry’

Some hotels and restaurants have also started new composting initiatives. 

In 2021, the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina made changes to its composting program after it evaluated its waste output and noticed food was a large component. The hotel partnered with Waste Management’s CORe organic recycling program, which converts food waste into an “organic slurry” that generates green energy.

“When we cannot donate food to Feeding San Diego, we repurpose the food scraps to help eliminate the amount of food waste that goes into a landfill. As a result, we are lowering our carbon footprint and saving resources. Our goal is to reduce food waste by 20% in 2023,” said Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina Executive Chef Marcos Seville. 

As part of the changes, the property began using a 220-pound dehydrator, which removes moisture from food scraps, resulting in a smaller size of waste. Today, the kitchen dehydrates food scraps from catering, resulting in a reduction in volume of over 80%. The food waste is then taken to a composting facility where it is recycled into mulch. 

Reducing waste from the outset

In hotels, staving off overproduction can go a long way toward reducing food waste. 

Hotels have the potential to decrease food waste by as much as 50% by developing menus designed to minimize waste both in the kitchen and after service, according to a joint study by the World Wildlife Fund and AHLA. 

The Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C., is one location that has found success with the model. The hotel hosts a number of high-profile events — including the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner — yet it’s managed to cut food waste in half. 

The hotel developed waste-conscious menus highlighting ingredients that produce smaller amounts of waste. Additionally, it donates excess food and meals — roughly 7% of their prepared foods, according to LightStay, Hilton’s sustainability reporting software. 

What the Washington Hilton does have left goes into its digester weekly for processing.  

Meanwhile, at the nearby Fairmont Washington DC, hotel staff redesigned their buffet offering to reduce waste by separating food waste from other waste streams at the buffet breakdown station. Among guests, the separate bins called attention to the idea of preventing food waste as a whole, and after a one-month trial of the system, the hotel found a compost hauler and created a permanent organic waste separation program.  

Dive Brief:

• Choice Hotels International has partnered with Grubhub to offer guests at 500 participating hotels off-premise food options through the online ordering company’s mobile app, the hotel company announced. 
• Guests at participating midscale and extended stay Choice properties — including Everhome Suites, Clarion Pointe, Comfort Inn, Mainstay Suites and Sleep Inn — will be able to order food directly to their hotel through Grubhub without the delivery fees the app would normally charge. 
• The collaboration is a strategic move by Choice to expand its Choice Privileges loyalty program, though any guest at a participating hotel can access the benefit. Choice follows several other hotel chains to partner with Grubhub in recent months as third-party food delivery to hotels becomes increasingly popular. 

Dive Insight:

As part of the collaboration, guests will be able to access a specially branded ordering and delivery platform within the Grubhub app while at Choice properties. Beyond the tailored ordering process, guests will also receive one free month of Grubhub+, the app’s loyalty program, which offers free delivery on orders costing $12 or more. 

“Offering $0 delivery fees with Grubhub enriches the guest experience at these participating hotels as it provides logistical and financial ease to guests seeking food delivery,” Julie Purser, VP of loyalty strategy and membership rewards at Choice Hotels, said in a statement. She added that the company is actively looking for opportunities to expand its loyalty program, particularly with “benefits that will add additional value for [Choice Privileges] members.” 

Choice follows other hotel companies that have collaborated with online food delivery platforms of late. 

Hilton’s Homewood Suites brand partnered with Grubhub to offer guests at some 500 hotels access to off-site dining options. And last month, Sonesta announced that guests at 120 of its Extended Stay Suites and Simply Suites locations would have access to Grubhub’s ordering and delivery services. 

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts similarly partnered with DoorDash, and Hyatt collaborated with food delivery company Gopuff in 2021 to bring drinks, snacks and groceries to hotel guests.