This is not rocket science, but it is a mystery. You don’t need a team of crack consultants to tell you that the very last experience hotel guests have in most hotels is breakfast. Why then do so many hotels who charge top dollar to their guests treat them with such disrespect when it comes to breakfast. “Let me relieve you of hundreds/thousands of euros while serving you up the lowest quality food imaginable for your last experience of our hospitality”.
Let’s be clear, this does not apply to all hotels, and it does not apply to all five star hotels but there are enough of them serving mass produced muck on endless buffets that it has to impact return visits and create an immoral amount of waste.
Since the beginning of 2025, numerous hotel stays across three, four and five star hotels for both work and leisure have reinforced the opinion that someone in the hospitality sector has seriously dropped the ball. Some of the best breakfasts are to be had in smaller, independent, so called lower tier hotels where it is critical to their survival that the guests every experience is the best it can be. They understand that if a guest has a final experience of a terrible/ mediocre/ bad taste breakfast, they may not come back, and that has a measurable impact on their profitability.
Is it that bigger, higher profile, award winning hotels feel that they can absorb the guest who takes umbrage at being fed industrial quality rubbish first thing in the morning?
It is difficult not to react with absolute fury to the ‘buffet breakfast’ in all its iterations. The pastries – frozen, ‘baked fresh’; fruit salad – may or may not be ‘freshly made’; yogurts or dubious origin; dried fruits, seeds, nuts – to give an air of health; juices – definitely not freshly made – choice is never the problem; quality almost always is.
Covid forced many hotels to abandon the buffet, those that adapted well to this discovered that they made very significant savings in ingredients, food waste and guest satisfaction. Many chose to retain this or a combination of a small buffet with high quality ingredients and a simple cooked breakfast offering.
There will be cries of ‘what about labour costs? What about the continuing costs of ‘silent guests’ walking out the door after yet another brutal last eating experience and silently never going back?
It’s a mystery.