The Wonder Agency
A hotel came to us wanting more from its restaurant and bar. Three months later, food and beverage revenue was up 58% year on year, and room bookings were up 26% over the same period. The client has asked us not to name them, but we can share the thinking behind it.
The problem: marketing to people already in the building
Most hotel restaurants are marketed as a feature of the hotel. They appear on the hotel website, under the hotel’s Instagram, in a line in the booking confirmation. That reaches guests, who will probably eat in once anyway. It does very little to reach the far larger audience nearby: locals, people who work in the area, and people looking for somewhere to celebrate.
The opportunity in hotel F&B is rarely the guests. It’s everyone else.
The approach: restaurant first
We flipped the order. Instead of marketing a hotel that happened to have a restaurant, we marketed the restaurants and bars as destinations in their own right, with the hotel as part of the story rather than the headline.
That meant five things working together:
- Content: food, drink and atmosphere at the centre, shot to make the restaurant look like somewhere you’d choose for a night out.
- Social media: run to appeal to locals, not just to people planning a stay.
- Paid advertising: aimed at the people who live and work nearby.
- Website: the restaurants given a clear, bookable presence of their own.
- Influencer marketing: local creators who could introduce the restaurants to the right audience.
The results
Within three months, food and beverage revenue was 58% higher than the same period the year before. Room bookings rose 26% over the same three months.
We don’t claim every extra room booking came from the restaurants. But it makes sense that it helped: a hotel with a restaurant people talk about is a more appealing place to stay, and content that makes the dining room look irresistible sells the whole hotel.
What other hotels can take from it
- Market your restaurant and bar to locals, not only to guests.
- Give them their own identity where it suits them, while keeping the link to the hotel clear.
- Lead with food, drink and atmosphere in your content.
- Report food and beverage revenue alongside rooms, so you can see what the marketing is doing.
If you run a hotel and suspect your restaurant could be doing more, a free audit is a good place to start. We’ll look at how it is marketed today and tell you what we’d do first.
