Stores, pantries help guests stock their in-room minibars

Custom selection

The Hyatt Regency New Orleans does not stock its mini guestroom refrigerators with items prior to a guest’s arrival like the average hotel. Instead, the Hyatt installed empty refrigerators in each of its rooms, and guests are encouraged to stock the fridges themselves by either bringing items along with them or purchasing from a general store found in the main lobby.

Items in the Hyatt Regency’s general store range in price from low-end products found in your local gas station or mini-mart to high-end wines and spirits. The guestroom refrigerator does not come pre-stocked, and so there is no possibility that a guest may be charged for a good they do not wish to actively purchase themselves. All purchases for goods and services that would normally be found in the room’s refrigerator are instead found in the hotel’s general store.

“Our customers customize their own refrigerator,” said Michael Smith, GM of the Hyatt Regency New Orleans. “For that to work, we have a 24-hour fresh market and convenience store located directly inside the hotel.”

The 2,000-square-foot convenience store contains beauty products, medical supplies and assorted food items of varying prices. The guestroom’s refrigerator comes with a pantry space above the refrigerator for guests to store items bought at the store that do not need to be refrigerated, emphasizing the space and giving both the store and the refrigerator a clearer purpose in the room’s chemistry.

“We did a survey to see what customers are willing to pay [at the convenience store] and it influenced how we decided on pricing,” Smith said. “When you have a diverse customer base where not everyone has access to an expense account, you have to acknowledge that some people can’t afford [higher-end products]. Rather than having guests like that migrate to local drugstores for their purchases, they can stay right here. It keeps us self contained.”

Smith said the true strength of the symbiotic relationship between the guestroom’s refrigerator and the convenience store is that it allows for the guests to fully take control of not only their spending but also their food intake.

“They know what they would stock [the minifridge] with,” he said.

Minibars bill guests automatically

When a customer checks into a hotel, the last thing he or she is looking forward to is hotel staff entering the room to replenish the minibar. In the past, hotel staff has had to physically inspect the minibar in order to find out if it has been used, but recent innovations have made such inspections unnecessary.

“We offer instantaneous billing and replenishment tracking,” said Jeffrey Mihalakis, director of food and beverage at The Pierre in New York City. “We have a timer set for 60 seconds after a guest removes an item from the fridge to when they are billed for the item.”

Later, when housekeeping enters the room for a scheduled check, personnel will inspect the contents of the refrigerator to make sure the billed items have been consumed. If a billed item is shown to have been unopened despite having left the refrigerator for 60 seconds, the guest is credited the cost of the goods.

“We’ve billed that way from the beginning, since we opened June 1, 2009, and to date, there have been no complaints over the system,” Mihalakis said. “We think that when they access the minibar they have a good idea of what it is they are looking for.”

Guests use minifridges for own food, beverages

Wireless Internet, parking and coffee in the morning are all things that hotel guests have come to expect from hotels. One aspect of the room that has encountered a gradual change over the years is the minifridge component of the minibar, which has slowly grown emptier and emptier.

“Our fridges typically serve as storage space for the guests,” said Jude Nau, GM of the Best Western Plus Sundial in Scottsdale, Ariz. “We are a limited-service hotel, and though we aren’t opposed to stocking the fridges, we don’t see many customers looking to buy from them. So they stay empty.”

Hotels like the Best Western Sundial have instead focused their attention on creating snack areas for guests to access outside of their guestroom while providing the refrigerator and space within the room to store additional food and beverages for later consumption. Nau sees this as a growing movement toward more budget-conscious spending in hotel guests who would much rather use the hotel’s facilities to store their own goods, especially when the hotel is only being used for a single night. Additionally, Nau has cited a switch from an alcohol-dependent minibar setup to a more health-conscious area of the room that promotes both healthy living and healthy budgeting.

“The refrigerators at this point are very reflective of the guest,” Nau said. “Refrigerators themselves are requested much more often than [items to be placed within them].”

Nau said she has noticed a change in the use of the fridges by customers, who are using them fore more than just food.

“One thing that I hadn’t expected was the way guests use the refrigerators to store their medicine,” Nau said. “Today, more and more medicine requires refrigeration, so this is an important utility to provide for guests despite them not using the refrigerators for actual hotel products.”