Experiential Dining - Boosting Your Hotel's F&B Success

Do you feel that a good dining experience starts with good food?

If you're one of those hoteliers, you're on the wrong track. Why?

After spending hours on their journey, do you think your guests would be excited to read through your boring menus? No, right?

Instead, they will get excited if they get interactive tech-enabled dining experiences.

They want every aspect of the dining area to be covered with drama and entertainment. They want to sense the flavors, and the ingredients involved in preparing that special dish.

In this guide, we'll show you what experiential dining means and how it can do WONDERS for your hospitality biz.

What is experiential dining?

Experiential Dining isn’t about food, it’s about unique experiences that hoteliers create for guests. It can be through weaving stories through guest-staff interactions to creating tantalizing menus that guests will adore and transforming every meal into an unforgettable adventure.

The focus of experiential dining revolves around creating a welcoming environment that guests will love.

The demand for these experiences has been growing because people, especially Millennials and Gen Z guests crave such things.

Adopting an experiential dining experience can be a game changer for your hotel.

How?

It plays with the guest senses through immersive experiences and brings farm-to-table concepts.

When guests come to your hotel, you can talk about how chefs prepare delicious meals for them, right from sourcing ingredients from the farm to showing the process of how the food is being prepared to bringing it on the plate.

That’s just one snapshot of how farm-to-table dining experiences add a WOW factor to the guest experience. By bringing sustainable dining experiences, you make your hotel STAND OUT and indicate that you genuinely care about your guests.

Moreover, in today’s world, people value experiences over food. Their love for food is never undervalued when they get involved in small things such as through cooking demonstrations and where the ingredients come from.

Key benefits of experiential dining for hotels

The expectations of modern consumers have grown and if your hotel sticks with traditional ways of serving food, it’s meaningless for your guests.

Guests want a thrilling experience that’s like adding a cherry on the cake. They get bored of traditional old-fashioned restaurant concept that’s limited to top-notch food

UK hospitality published a report which states that 87% of guests believe dining experiences are directly linked to their satisfaction. Then STR conducted another study on the relationship between dining experiences and hotel’s F&B revenue.

Results of the study state that hotels that offer unique dining experiences increase their F&B revenue by 10% than those without such offerings.

It’s clear from the numbers that those dining experiences affect your guests emotionally.

When guests don’t get such exclusive experiences anywhere, they’re ready to enjoy their stay at your property even if it costs more than they expect.

When travelers enjoy such dining experiences, they’re likely to become your brand evangelists and talk about their positive experiences on their socials. This way, it becomes word-of-mouth marketing for you.

4 types of experiential dining experiences at the hotel

Here are the few popular types of experiential dining experiences that world class hoteliers adopt-

1. Multi-sensory dining

There’s a popular saying that “we eat with our eyes” and that theory is applicable in real life. Say for instance your guest hears the crackling sound of sugar crust or any crunch of product, they form an imaginary picture about that food in their mind.

And hoteliers and restaurant owners know how to present dishes in a way that simulates individual senses. Adding elements to the dish such as dry ice appeals to their sensory aspect and they get the taste of food before eating.

Imagine a scenario where you keep a menu card along with each item, and when a dish is offered to each guest, they can see a list of ingredients packed inside each meal.

When they start eating food, hotel staff use mood-altering lights that evoke their senses.

Wouldn't they feel good? Of course, they would.

More importantly, guests won't mind paying extra for those enhanced dining experiences.

2. Thematic dining

This type of experiential dining follows a specific theme in a hotel or restaurant.

The idea behind this concept is to take diners back to those ages and attract them by aligning the costumes, menus, and dress code with that theme.

For instance – Soneva Kiri offers a tripod dining experience where the guests sit in a bird-like nest and can view the clear waters from the heights.

Whether guests have breakfast, lunch, or candlelit dinner, hoteliers follow the same theme everywhere that matches the jungle ambiance such as Canapes in the Canopy or Woodland offerings. It implies that ingredients are sourced from the resort’s organic garden. 

3. Dinner theater

Dinner theater is an infusion of entertainment with dining experiences. Here, guests will take their bites while getting involved in a musical or laughing show.

A report from SevenRooms states that a quarter of Americans says that they visit venues that offer entertainment options along with food and drink options.

Thus, the best way to appeal to people’s attention is by turning the hotel and restaurant into an entertainment venue.

4. Technology-enhanced dining

Imagine if guests come to your hotel or restaurant, and they could see the dish looks like in 3D form, they can sense the taste and see its texture, isn’t that good?

Then, as soon as the staff serves dishes on a smart table, guests can see the nutritional information and what ingredients are mixed and matched in preparing the meal. The whole experience becomes more engaging through tech-enabled experiential dining.

The next moment, the robotic staff comes to serve the dishes on the table. It’s a win-win for guests and hotels. Hoteliers can reduce their labor costs on one hand and guests can get such engaging experiences.

4 Steps to implement experiential dining in your hotel

Creating experiential dining experiences at your hotel/restaurant isn’t just confined to food or drinks, it goes beyond that. Here are the steps you can follow to implement experiential dining experiences for your guests-

1. Identify your target customers

The first step in creating experiential dining experiences starts with knowing your target customers. Segment your prospects in different categories such as - 

Whether they’re adventurous eaters or are they luxury travelers, or they’re budget-conscious people. You get access to previous guest’s booking history and their details through the property management system.

But how would you know which dish they like the most?

Through feedback management software, you can send in-stay and post-stay surveys to guests asking them about their overall experience with food.

After knowing guests' likes and preferences, you can set up dining arrangements and create a welcoming atmosphere. You will customize the menu, plan the theme of the hotel, and choose the background music that blends with that theme.

2. Creating the menu design and deciding the ambiance

When it comes to menu design, you can add a pinch of storytelling to a dish that narrates the journey of how food is prepared right from the moment to sourcing the local ingredients. These experiences are called farm-to-dining concepts.

To add more immersive experiences at dining, you can use AR/VR technology so that guests can preview the dishes. 

A popular example of a luxury resort is Fly Sauces, which offers an experiential dining experience to guests. They can go through the journey of Soneva Fushi before they come to the dining place. 

It captures the guests' attention by presenting seasonal food that comes directly from SonevaFushi's organic garden, emphasizing the farm-to-table dining concept.

3. Train your hotel staff

The next thing that matters for an experiential restaurant is investing in staff training. Your chef needs to nail the art of storytelling so they can engagingly present the dishes.

While serving the food, each of your hotel staff should discuss behind the scenes the process of turning every raw ingredient into jaw dropping food. Moreover, if the restaurant follows a specific theme or culture, then the staff should understand and follow the same. 

The hotel staff should participate in role-playing scenarios to experiment with how they would serve the guests.

4. Invest in technology

A report states that 53% of Millennials and Gen-ziers prefer tech-enabled dining experiences.As customers are getting tech-savvy, restaurant owners realize the need to invest in different systems such as POS and self-ordering kiosks.

Another reason for taking a technology-forward approach is to focus on providing a better guest experience. In 2023, around 48% of restaurants invested in online reservation systems and digital menus.

The data itself says that such tech-driven solutions not only enhance your guest experience but also make your hotel stand out.

Future of experiential dining for hotels

Dining in 2025 has changed significantly and it forced hoteliers to focus on ONE concept -Sell experiences not products.

Beyond 2025, dining will not be solely connected to the eatery, it will become more immersive and experiential.

More and more hoteliers will use AR/VR technologies to immerse guests by transporting them to a place where ingredients are taken from. 

This way they can sense the taste and enjoy the flavors before even eating it. Pop-up dining experiences will gain traction, and hotels are switching to such experiences that focus on telling a story to guests.

How can BOTSHOT enhance the dining experience for guests?

At BOTSHOT, we provide point-of-sale software for hotels and restaurant owners for managing food and beverage orders. As cloud-based software, it accumulates the total bill in one place providing a clear picture to hoteliers like YOU.

Thanks to its reporting capabilities, it can generate insights that help you know which type of guests order a specific meal and at what time of the day.

So,

Next time, if the same guest comes to your property, then you should personalize your menu and add their favorite dishes. This way, you can grow your hotel and restaurant business revenue by 3x.