Originally Posted by
catocony
I know that Bill Marriott used to always complain that people treated the restaurants at his hotels like coffee shops. Breakfast and that was about it, unless you were attending an event in the hotel. Well, I would rather have a nice coffee shop with a good breakfast than the Bistro concept, which is in some no-man's land between an overpriced coffee shop and a bad, overpriced limited-menu restaurant.
What's wrong with a _successful_ coffee shop? The one and only advantage the new CYs have over a coffee shop is they have a "grab n go" case, which I will concede, is a cheap and convenient way to make up for lack of room service.
I just stayed 11 nights at a CY and I didn't buy anything from the Bistro even once. That sure isn't driving revenue.
To be fair, that was a CY that had orderinn.com
Originally Posted by
OrangeCountyCommuter
The rest of the lobby remodel they did is a joke, but.. (Do they really think a "remodeled lobby" drives customers?)
I always fail to undertand how these chains justify the new lobbies as something that raises room rates. Now HGI is embarking on the same thing: telling the franchises to put in the new lobbies, by explicitly telling them it will drive higher room rates. Call me a skeptic.