How many times have you gone to a hotel with your family and woken up early just in time to grab the complimentary breakfast that your hotel promised you? With painfully early time slots that hotels have in which they serve breakfast, it’s natural for every hotel guest to wonder why hotels serve complimentary breakfast and why not complimentary lunch or dinner? Surely that’ll be better than waking up at 7:00 am on your vacay, just to grab a bite of a croissant.
From the hotel's perspective, serving breakfast is one of several ways to increase their profits. Serving complimentary breakfast has become a trend in the hospitality industry with guests choosing those hotels to stay in, which provide a complimentary breakfast. This has now become a marketing freebie that hotels give customers to lure them in. The hotel staff also makes an effort to serve a sumptuous breakfast to encourage repeat business. While hotels that are still struggling to find a consumer base give complimentary breakfast with a room stay, hotels that are usually fully booked have started taking a surplus over the room fare from guests who want to avail the complimentary breakfast service. This has confused many travelers. Sushant Lama, a travel vlogger says, “I was booking my stay with a five star hotel in Delhi recently and while I was booking the room they had an option of availing ‘complimentary’ breakfast. As soon as I ticked that option, the room rate increased. How is this a complimentary service then?”
The marketing strategies that hoteliers use to attract a client base has an answer to Sushant’s question. “It’s basically all about increasing client dependency. On the first visit or for a limited time, hotels usually give complimentary breakfast without charging surplus to encourage customers to come in. During Corona and the first few lockdowns, this was the case with almost all five star hotels in Delhi. Once the customer tastes the experience of a five star hotel, and when demand for rooms increase and business begins to flourish again, five star hotels start charging a basic amount for their complimentary breakfast services. Till this time, the customer is hooked to the hotel’s breakfast and doesn’t mind paying some amount to enjoy it. So complimentary breakfasts are a way to increase hotel profits and make new customers,” says Aakriti Tripathi, a marketing consultant from Delhi.
The other reason for hotels providing only complimentary breakfast rather than lunch or dinner is rooted in convenience. “Guests who are on a vacation, usually leave by noon for sight seeing and exploration. This will make serving a complimentary lunch redundant. All guests want to make the most of their time in a new city and also taste the regional cuisine of the new place. This is why guests prefer to eat lunch and dinner out. Hotel management understands this and therefore, serves complimentary breakfasts over free lunches or dinners. Also, it is difficult to locate breakfast shops in the morning in a new city, people prefer such a hotel, where breakfast is available for free. So consumer behaviour dictates it all. In spas and resorts where guests spend majority of time on the property, hotels provide a package offering complimentary breakfast, lunch and dinner - for they know that guests have come to relax and unwind. So in the end, it’s all about being practical and relevant for your guests,” says Deepak Aggarwal, a student of hotel management in Delhi.