The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, a Marriott Autograph Collection property, now has a $75 minimum for room service. And if you want proper plates and napkins, rather than cardboard and paper, there’s a $250 minimum for that. Yet a high-end property like Cosmopolitan should lean into room service.
Cosmo has jacked up the minimum for having your room service served on plates like a human being from $100 to $250. Otherwise, enjoy your spork, suckers. Welcome to the Show™️ pic.twitter.com/oNFVB32Ym3
— Misnomer (@Misnomer) December 15, 2023
People complain that room service is too expensive, sometimes takes too long, and isn’t always good. Many people think, do I really want a mediocre hotel’s mediocre food when I have the miracle of choice delivered at my fingertips? That’s the theory, anyway, but in practice people order french fries and burrito bowls from Uber Eats and GrubHub. And it, too, comes late.
And many hotels are eliminating room service, in a self-defeating cycle.
- Hotels turn room service into Uber Eats from a bad restaurant
- Everyone just DoorDashes from a better restaurant
- Low sales cause the hotel to drop room service entirely. See? Nobody wants it!
When they’re just providing an interior experience to a delivery app, you might as well order from the delivery app. And when the hotel isn’t providing an experience that’s differentiated from Airbnb, there goes their competitive advantage.
This is just like when a hotel makes housekeeping tough to get, because you have to request it and maybe even fill out a form, and the hotel concludes nobody wants housekeeping but then wonders why a no frills ‘full service’ hotel can’t compete with short-term rentals.
Room service isn’t fast food. It’s indulgent when properly executed, romantic even. Those that do it well can really earn outsized guest loyalty by creating an emotional connection. What more powerful way is there to do that than food?
Room service isn’t for everyone, especially those who find it too expensive but there are plenty of situations where it can be worth paying a premium for even outside of a resort context.
- I’ve had many room service meals where it was super convenient to just have food brought to the room when my daughter was less than 14 months old.
- And I’ve ordered breakfast in the morning when I wanted to work, rather than go down to the hotel’s restaurant or to my conference. I’m not ready to run into anyone and get stuck in a conversation. Food comes to my room, and I can eat it while going through documents and while getting dressed.
You’re paying a premium to have the food ‘just show up’ and where you can be dressed more casually than going down to pick it up yourself. I just wish more hotels made it clear whether the service charge covered a tip.
Now, delivery from the best restaurants in town, well-packed, promptly delivered will be more enjoyable than a mediocre meal delivered soggy on a tray from a mediocre hotel kitchen, but that’s a straw man.
I’ve had some amazing room service meals. Of course there’s breakfast at the Park Hyatt Paris – with fabulous fruit and french pastries, eggs to order, and great cheeses. The pho I had from the Sheraton Saigon was pretty unbeatable, too.
Take a lesson from airlines, most plane food isn’t very good but soups perform exceptionally well when they’re reheated. Stick to easy items that don’t have to be eaten the moment they come off the cook top, and that don’t take a lot of precision in preparation. One of the really great joys I think is ordering nasi goreng in the middle of the night!
I have to say my absolute favorite thing about some Hyatt hotels is where they provide top tier elite breakfast benefits complimentary through room service. At the Park Hyatt Abu Dhabi last month they did not even bring a bill for food ordered during breakfast hours.
Room service is a true value add. It’s also expensive to offer. It needs to be priced appropriately, which is why it’s often “too expensive.” But if it’s too expensive, it needs to be good. The answer here is to do the hard work, not to shy away from it, because that’s the road to a downward spiral in margins.
I didn’t know that Delta owns a hotel in Vegas…
Hotel room service, along with on-site dining, are one of those things that guests may not use frequently but when they need it, really need it. This in my mind justifies part of the cost of staying at a hotel.
But times of course are also changing. Food delivery apps can offer unparalleled selection that is simply not economic for a hotel to provide. I’d love to see a property manage delivery of my Uber Eats and bring this to me plated.
Cogent and well said.
I just had an eight-day stay at the Four Seasons Buenos Aires. The excellent Room Service allowed me to work more efficiently, not just because there was food, but because it was good and presented with care. It left me sated, both physically and psychologically, and was a major contributing factor to my wanting to return next year.
It is one thing if you are keeping a kitchen open just because but if you have a big hotel that will have diners all night/day then I think they should just look at unbundling the cost. What’s the marginal cost for room service vs someone eating in at the restaurant or doing pick up? That is why there are service fees/delivery charges. There’s no way it is anywhere near $250 — in fact, ordering more probably makes it all the more ineffective to deliver.
You have some extra cost for setting up the table — but you still need people to set tables for dining in too. You have more time an employee needs to be running to deliver the food, and return the food, but even in really large hotels you are probably looking at ~10 mins each for delivery and retrieval — and retrieval can be stringed together if done properly the next morning. But again 20 minutes of labor is nowhere near $250. There is maybe a little additional waste between all the little condiments, etc. that have to get delivered just in case. Again no where near $250.
@ Gary — The Seabourn Cruise I am on right now has 24-hour all-inclusive room service with caviar and, champagne always available and no-tipping accepted. You should give it a try! This experience solves most of my travel complaints.
Another amenity gone. Not surprised.
Excellent room service is one of my favorite (disappearing) things. A female dining alone in restaurants invites uncomfortable conversation, even if well intended. And I find it relaxing to settle in at night with an array of foods nibble at my own pace while attending to other matters. My favorite at the Plaza is a salad, a hot dog from the kids menu, and a passion fruit Pavlova. (It’s the only time I will eat a hot dog as those are delicious) and probably costs as much as the caviar service. I don’t care. Delivery food could never replace this experience and I will spend more for a hotel with in room dining.
Good room service is still offered in places where labor costs are low, and where grace is an accepted value. In other words, never in the US, and rarely in Latin America or Europe. ‘Nuff said?
I rarely ordered room service in the past – I generally like to go out and find places to eat when I travel, but if the weather was bad or the timing inconvenient, ordering up made sense. My one regular exception was the few times in Calgary – I would arrive at the now-Delta Calgary Airport Hotel for my flight out the next day. After 2 weeks of digging dinosaurs in remote spots in Alberta – where I’d been living in tents and cooking over camp stoves – I would check in, take a decadently long shower, and then order room service. It was always a treat to finish off the end of what was an otherwise relatively low-cost vacation.
These days? I’m mildly immune compromised, so eating in public spaces is still something I’m trying to avoid. I recently went to order room service at my hotel for breakfast and was surprised at all the fees and minimums. So I just walked out and went to the bagel place across the street instead and brought that back to my room. Faster, more convenient, and more affordable, if a shade less fun.
I too am curious about the statement that room service is “expensive to offer”. I cannot think of any marginal costs incurred to offer this service by a property already featuring an on site restaurant. Delivery would be done by staff already on the premises and not 100% utilized (e.g. bell stand).
Indulgent is expensive to provide and limited to just a few guests in terms of demand at a viable price point, which makes it tough for the economics to pencil out. There’s a lot of criticism for them moving to this model, but if it was working well before why would they try this new model? This is just the same as all the bloggers clamoring for ever more indulgent F seats, but only ever paying for it with saver award tickets that never earn the airlines’ necessary return to justify the continued existence of the cabin (which is why you never see airlines leaning in to offering F cabins on more routes when they introduce a fancier product, it’s always pulled back in routes, seats and frequency, no matter what dubious business case airline bloggers put forth). The hotel is making clear here that they don’t care to serve small room service check sizes because it’s not profitable enough for them. Offering it at a loss to try to win guests, particularly in Las Vegas where a hotel on the strip can’t be easily replicated by an Airbnb is dumb.
The notice is also poorly written. Since the $75 minimum only applies to the Express option, it should be written underneath the Express option and in a font and size consistent with the $250 minimum charge.
In room dining is a treat, a luxury. Having food brought to the comfort and privacy of your suite is nice! But it has to be properly done. At the Hilton Copacabana las year I ordered room service and the food was brought in a paper bag and left hanging the door knob outside my room.
You forgot the #1 reason to keep – business travelers. Many arrive at a hotel after a day of travel and need to work from their rooms or are just too tired to venture out in a foreign city. Quick look at menu, quick call and viola – food delivered in 30-45 minutes with zero time wasted. And typically they don’t care about the price as it will be expensed.
To me, changing room service patterns (not offering it, or serving it in awful takeout containers, or making you go to the lobby to pick it up in awful takeout containers, etc.) mark the reality that full-service hotels in the US will continue to distinguish themselves from the select-service group of hotels like Hampton Inns.
It’s what Boraxo said: I would deliberately choose a full-service property (when possible) when traveling for business, knowing that I was arriving late, needed to work, and would value the convenience of something (even an average chicken Caesar salad) delivered in 30-40 minutes. When the full service hotel doesn’t offer this and makes you call the pizza joint or use a delivery app, or purchase something pre-packed from the lobby “market,” then it’s another way in which the “full service” hotel isn’t much different than the Hampton Inn—except that the full service place probably doesn’t have the in-room microwave. Why pay for the full service property, then?
The worst thing I’ve encountered was Marriott’s turn to room service being served in entirely takeout containers, versus real plates, etc., and then billing this as part of their “green” initiatives since the takeout containers were largely paper instead of plastic. Yes, because my sandwich being served in a paper box I throw away is more environmentally friendly than serving it on a real plate. Greenwashing at its finest.
Let me guess…Cosmo wants to deliver food in “single-use” containers but I bet they have “save the planet” bulk shampoo in the shower and little hangers with endangered polar bears telling you how you can make a difference if you hang your towel up.
CW – Room service often requires a few dedicated employees that take orders, run orders up and down to customers, and removes the room service items from rooms. In particular, unionized hotels often have labor contracts that *require* that room service functions are staffed separately from other restaurant functions – so many hotels may have to add a separate cook, dishwasher, food runner, etc just for room service. Those positions add up. Remember that Las Vegas is a union town, and Las Vegas hotel workers just negotiated a new contract with nice raises and benefit increases.
This is why in many non-union hotels that still offer room service, they will try to simply have an employee run up a boxed meal from the restaurant – which is probably closer to what you were thinking. These employees don’t have to worry about things like retrieving plates/silverware, etc – they just run up and go back to the restaurant.
@Anthony – thanks for the insight on the nuances of the labor side. I still have a bit of a challenge, though, believing that in a 200+ room business hotel, the room service demand (including all of the dedicated revenue streams via service charges) would not be sufficient to more than cover a couple runners at a modest entry-level hospitality wage.
I used to love Room Service, but I love ‘hotel take-out’ much more. Place an order, trot down to the lobby to pick it up, Viola, a nice meal in my room. Much less expensive, more convenient and the food is not cold and unappetizing. ‘Course, you gotta know to order the food that travels well. And I generally don’t stay in hotels that charge $600+ for a room. In that case, they should offer room service, and charge properly for it.
My spouse and I just stayed 8 nights at Pillows Hotel in Amsterdam in November for a non-business trip. Room service was ordered via the square app. It was delivered fast and hot. The price was reasonable, if I recall correctly there was just a 10 euro service charge. Prices were the same as the restaurant. It really added to the enjoyment of the trip. Many evenings it was cold and rainy or we were just too tired after a day of sightseeing to venture out for a meal. Sure there are delivery apps but we haven’t had good luck with them. When we stayed at a hotel in Burgundy Uber Eats delivered our pizza late, cold and with mistakes. Plus, I had to walk out to the parking lot to wait for it. I suppose the delivery apps can deliver to your room but I think that’s a bit much to ask of someone earning what Uber pays.