Bringing Home The Bacon

Or in this case, the revenues. F&B outlets that anchor hotels are drawing in the footfalls and adding to thebottomline.

- Deepali Nandwani And Rupali Dean

Restaurants and bars that anchor a hotel play a rather significant role in creating new hospitality formats that have the ability to evoke an emotional response and create powerful memories. The experiential hospitality formats thus created can boost the revenue streams of hotels.

“People have moved away from accumulating ‘things’ in favour of amassing ‘experiences.’ These experiences can array from glitzy trips, to a simple night out at a new eatery. Food occupies a personal as well as social space in not just a consumers’ heart and mind, but also in his or her social network. There is a constant need for hotels toinnovate,” says Kunal Chauhan, General Manager, The Leela Palace Bengaluru.

A well-thought-out and beautifully executed F&B outlet in a hotel has the potential to gain independent identity and become a flagbearer for the hospitality brand. This fact is best represented by Jamavar, a signature restaurant of The Leela Hotels & Resorts. So popular is this restaurant with five iterations across India, that in 2016, Dinesh Nair, the group's co-chairman and managing director, and his daughter, Samyukta, took the restaurant to the posh Mayfair Street in London. This was the first time that an Indian restaurant from a luxury hotel was establishing its independent identity outside India, especially in a city and neighbourhood considered the Mecca of restaurants and fine dining. Nair, in an interview earlier had said, “Right now, we are the only luxury hotel group that has sought to establish new markets for its flagship restaurant outside the hotel properties. ITC’s Bukhara once had branches across the world, but they have shut those down. We had a space in London from when I was involved in a shortlived restaurant project. The location, on Mount Street in the heart of Mayfair, is true luxury and we thought it befitting of a brand like Jamavar.”