Brands Stir Up Fall Beverage Promotions

By Derek Gale, Senior Editor -- Hotels, 10/24/2008 11:56:00 AM

Hotel companies are continuing to focus on beverage sales and revenue this fall, rolling out creative new beverage programs to generate guest interest and spending. Two noteworthy examples in North America are Hyatt’s Revive promotion and InterContinental’s astrology cocktails.

Revive is meant to combine a refreshing take on eco-friendliness with a fresh batch of cocktails, wines and beer, while InterContinental’s astrology cocktails play off a common social custom and give guests the chance to look to the stars and dream—a bit of an escape in these turbulent times.

Both programs aim to engage guests and to promote interactivity, both between bar staff and guests and among guests.

“When the going gets tough, F&B gets creative,” notes Jean-Pierre Etcheberrigaray, vice president, food and beverage, The Americas, for IHG. 

That’s true for Hyatt as well. Barry Prescott, Hyatt’s corporate director of beverage, explains: “Revive was going to be something organic. It was going to be spring, and revive, and everything else. And it sort of took on a different spin when the economy started going south—we started looking at products that were not necessarily so premium for the hotels or expensive for the customers. The wines are simple to drink and were farmed sustainable, but are not organic. People understand if the wine is from sustainable farming—giving back to the earth once you’ve finished. They like that.”

The Revive program further incorporates the eco-friendly message and also becomes interactive through special seed packets that are given to guests who order one of the specialty drinks. The packets, printed on 25% recycled paper using biodegradable vegetable-based inks, contain seeds for guests to grow their own herbs at home, plus recipes for the Revive cocktails that incorporate those herbs and earth-friendly tips to put into practice.

The Revive menu includes the wild apple martini (made with fresh rosemary), the Revive-a-rita (garnished with fresh basil), zero-proof raspberry mint lemonade (made with fresh mint), and select wines and beer, such as the low-calorie MGD 64.

“The feedback has been unbelievable,” Prescott says. “People just love it. They are planting these seeds and the idea is you don’t have to go and buy basil—you’ve grown it yourself. And you pick these leaves and you can use them for cooking, for drinks.”

InterContinental’s astrology cocktail menu, meanwhile, offers 12 innovative cocktails, from the Sundown Swim (for those with the Pisces sign) to the Fiery Phoenix (for the Scorpios). The brand partnered with an expert astrologist and master mixologist to determine beverage characteristics for each zodiac sign and to match the proper ingredients, flavors and colors to each sign.

“Everybody has an astrological sign,” Etcheberrigaray says. “Everybody reads the horoscope. It’s always a piece of conversation.” But the brand is moving the conversation beyond the tired ‘What’s your sign?’ to an authentic discussion of cocktails and culture, using collateral that includes astrology cocktail wheels and mini bar booklets with recipes and explanations, plus lists of celebrities with each of the various signs.

IHG originally printed enough booklets to give each InterContinental bar 1,500 copies, but some hotels are giving out the booklets when guests check in, and some markets—like San Francisco, where InterContinental has two properties—already have run out, so the company is printing more.

“People are gobbling it up,” Etcheberrigaray says. “They are engaged to try their sign [cocktail] because they’re curious.” The company is even considering translating the booklets to Spanish. “Latinos dream more,” Etcheberrigaray explains.

In the end, this type of positive guest response is really what the hotel companies are after. “The whole idea is to engage the guest,” Prescott says. “The only thing I really, really care about is guest satisfaction. Honestly, profits do matter, but that all comes with guest satisfaction.”