clarkef

Count me as one of those that loves an extensive breakfast buffet at a high end hotel. I love the variety. Last summer I was at the Westin Tokyo. It had an extensive buffet of American and Japanese items. This allowed me to try some of the Japanese dishes with committing an entire meal to foods that I was unfamiliar with.

mstecker

Reading this thread is really making me long for a great breakfast buffet. Heck, I'd even take nasty eggs in the concierge lounge at this point.

flyboy_88

Over the years, I have seen some buffets change their method of delivery. Such has having a menu to order from and then the wait staff brings it to you. It is still fixed price for unlimited food.

Also, there are absolutely buffets with quality food. They just happen to be twice the price as well.

Redheadpeter

Oh I hope they are gone forever. Limits you to food that will hang around being kept warm , or cold, or neither for far too long!

pinniped

Buffets will be back for all of the same economic reasons they became popular to begin with.

I don't know the full history of the buffet - was it a popular item before the 1918 flu? - but it's survived many disease outbreaks over time and keeps coming back. Everybody knows cruise ships are floating petri dishes yet buffets are a common fixture there. If they make a few tweaks to improve cleanliness and freshness, great. But they won't die.

While we may perceive them as wasteful, they are likely a more efficient delivery mechanism even taking into account some level of food waste on the part of the end user. They can likely model the total food throughput (including what we perceive as waste) very accurately at this point. They can optimize batch size for maximum efficiency...it's less costly than individual meals and waitstaff bringing it to every table.

We may think they are gross, but honestly that perception is mostly influenced by the other buffet users, or our stereotype of a buffet user, not so much the format itself. Many of us would find the $5.99 all-u-can-eat Ponderosa buffet gross, but the Ritz-Carlton buffet okay. It's not the delivery format.

As far as hotels go, we'll see what competition drives in the coming months/years. Limited-service brands like Hampton Inn often charge a big premium vs. other rural motel brands. Are people going to pay it for grab & go bags? I hope people weren't booking Hamptons for the food to begin with, but it *is* one of the things they prominently advertise. In the midrange brands, if Marriott guts its lounge offerings then I'm probably going to look at other options. What is Hilton doing? Is one brand or the other forcing Plats/Diamonds to the restaurant and, if so, what's on the menu when they get there? At the high end, maybe less impact....but I have stayed in Ritzes and W=A's that were very proud of their elaborate Sunday buffets if nothing else.

In a lot of respects, I expect brands to try to cut costs. The hotel industry has mostly been driving itself down to a basic commodity in recent years, removing the concept of "hospitality" from all but a few luxury properties. That said, the commodity itself has gotten better in many ways, so I guess a focus on basics isn't all bad. It's just not what many of us are used to.

Scott Kiwi

In this land of plenty, buffets serve as reminders of American greatness. A President Plump would be well-advised to issue an Executive Order declaring buffets as essential to America!

cscasi

Good thoughts. However, proving the foods in portions or having to be wrapped would only increase costs. Seems like whatever one does to try to make things better, comes with addiitonal costs. Perhaps that will be the new norm for those with beffets.

swag

This discussion has focused on the lounge and restaurant buffets that elites enjoy at the premium brands, but a bigger issue for Marriott (and the hotel industry in general) may be the lobby breakfasts open to all guests at select brands like Springhill, Fairfield, Residence Inn, Element, and Townplace. Those breakfasts are already pretty bad, but a big selling point to the budget-conscious travelers (especially families) who stay there. If buffet-fear persists into the foreseeable future, it's harder to see how those might adapt.

ALARISstl

Couldn’t the lounge attendant dish out the food? There would really be no reason for a lounge if you remove the food.

DMSFCA

I'm going to make it a goal to use that phrase in a conversation today just to see people visibly wince.

(not making fun of you, just thought those words would be hilarious out of context...)

ankomonkey

Similarly, I'm going to start using swag's new 'buffet-fear' phrase regularly

IluvSQ

That's why his handle is London ELITE

NotSoFrequentColorado

On Oceania cruises the buffet is not self-serve, and there is a clear plastic barrier between passengers and the serving dishes. Very low-risk.

SkyTeam777

I have read on FT, can't remember which hotel brand, but in Asia, lavish hotel breakfast buffets were back up and running.

I am in the camp that choosing my own food from a beautifully presented buffet is a luxury. I think the saddest thing about all of this (besides the human suffering/loss obviously) is how things like hotel restaurant and airline/airport/onboard lounge buffets and amenities will be hacked to pieces. Ordering from a restaurant menu, at least for me, almost always leads to some disappointment because the grandiose description never seems accurate or worthy of the finished product.

It would be great to have some sort of Wiki of the hotels that were operating buffets (even if served by staff) in lounges, at least, so people could choose accordingly where they wanted to stay. We would need more travel reports (harder to come by these days, but perhaps in the coming months) to support this.

If hotels kept buffets (maybe not interim but long term) during SARS, etc, perhaps there is still hope for those that like to enjoy them. Any other folks hoping for a Wiki with reports from Bonvoy properties?

sdsearch

You must have not paid attention to the lounge attendant's presence in enough lounges. In lots of smaller lounges with only one lounge attendant, the lounge attendant can disappear for dozens of minutes at a time, to take stuff down to the restaurant downstairs or bring it up from the restaurant downstairs (the lounge typically being on a high floor, while the restaurant is typically on a low floor).

So having the lounge attendant always there to dish out the food would require doubling up the staff in such situations. Does that sounds practical for the hotel?

Removing the food isn't the only practical alternative, but the main practical alternative is only providing pre-packaged buffet food, not open buffet food.