Marketing your hotel restaurant to its full potential
For your hotel restaurant to be commercially viable, you need hotel guests to use it consistently. The percentage of roomnights converted into restaurant sittings should be as high as possible. This requires a concerted marketing effort at several key stages.

Before guests arrive...
Your website should give prominence to your restaurant. The best hotel restaurant webpages make the prospect's mouth water. This is achieved with extensive menu information and staff biographies. Information on where your ingredients are sourced and the overall culinary philosophy are other potent "turn-ons". Include colourful photographs of a full and thriving restaurant, as well as real customer testimonials.

Dinner and room packages are also useful. Train your reservations staff to offer rooms "with dinner included" as well as breakfast. Include a "with dinner" check-box in your online booking engine.

As they check in...
Train front-desk staff to sell the restaurant properly at check-in and promote it, using special offers such as:

- Entry to a limited prize draw for a luxury weekend at the hotel.
- Free bottle of house wine with the chef's menu.
- "Choose your meal now, have it delivered to your room within the hour".

Keep props at check-in to aid staff, including menus or a bottle of the wine of the month. Staff who develop the ability to "read" a guest's meal requirements and make the correct offer will enjoy superb conversion.

When they are in the room...
Keep a dedicated restaurant profile in the room, separate from the main hotel portfolio, and include a handwritten personal invitation from your chef. Link restaurant promotions to other hotel amenities such as a "healthy menu" after the gym or a "detox menu" after spa treatment.

All over the hotel...
A good tip with promotional photos of the restaurant (displayed in lifts, for example) is that they should show the restaurant as busy and vibrant. You are subconsciously sending a negative message by displaying your restaurant as permanently empty, however aesthetically pleasing its design.
by Rajul Chande, managing director of revenue consultancy The Elite Hotelier