Think Outside the Pot

Signature coffee and tea programs can differentiate hotels from the competition.

By Derek Gale, Senior Associate Editor -- Hotels, 4/1/2008

Sweets, coffee and tea—they go together at almost any daypart. In fact, these delicacies, no longer confined to an after-meal routine, can be strong revenue generators throughout the day.

The Naturally Peninsula —Tea Flavours cookbook contains more than 70 tea-inspired recipes from Peninsula hotels, including one for raspberry tea-infused rhubarb with yogurt sherbet.

Hoteliers are no strangers to this, of course, but only recently have brands and properties begun to recognize the amazing differentiation potential of these product niches. Whether it is high-profile coffee partnerships or mold-breaking concepts like a dedicated tea cellar or a tea flavors cookbook, hoteliers are perking up to the smell of separating themselves from the competition and earning additional revenue.

Partners In Coffee

Loews Hotels, New York City, has sought to stand out by extending its existing relationship with celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse while adding a partner in coffee technology vendor Keurig. In doing so, the brand brings two varieties of Emeril’s coffee—Big Easy Bold and Jazzed Up Decaf—and Keurig’s single-cup brewing system to guestrooms across its portfolio.

Not to be outdone, at least one Fairmont hotel—the Fairmont Chicago—has spent some US$200,000 to install Nespresso single-serve espresso machines in all its guestrooms, while also making the machines available to meeting planners for do-it-yourself lattes and cappuccinos during conference breaks.

Redefining Tea Time

The Park Hyatt Washington’s Tea Cellar, unique in the United States, features a glass tea humidor and offers more than 50 rare and limited-production, single-estate teas from remote regions of China, Japan, Sri Lanka and the Himalayas. This includes Pu-Erh teas up to 1,600 years old.

The Peninsula Bangkok combines classic English afternoon tea fare with lighter, wellness enhancing ingredients.

The Rome Cavalieri Hilton, meanwhile, offers an afternoon tea service inspired by three of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s greatest paintings. “Tea with Tiepolo,” offering exotic Asian teas brewed with guests’ choice of mineral waters, is held directly below these works, which the hotel purchased at auction in late 2006. “Once we unveiled the Tiepolos, the way our guests interacted with the lobby changed,” says General Manager Milan Arandelovic. “We saw guests spending extraordinary amounts of time in front of the paintings, looking for excuses to linger. We realized it was time to give [them] a comfortable, elegant way to enjoy their time with the Tiepolos.”

Hong Kong-based The Peninsula Hotels is perhaps as dedicated to the art of tea as any hotel company. For example, The Peninsula Bangkok offers a daily Naturally Peninsula Afternoon Tea, which combines a classic English afternoon tea tradition with a variety of lighter, wellness-enhancing food ingredients such as avocado, whole-grain flour, homemade sugar-free jams and low-calorie cream. The idea is to stick to the Naturally Peninsula principle that “To live well is to eat well.”

In addition, through its merchandising arm Peninsula Merchandising Ltd., the company last fall released its second cookbook in the Naturally Peninsula series, Naturally Peninsula–Tea Flavours.

Direct comments to: derek.gale@reedbusiness.com