Main entrance to Da Vittorio Saigon at The Reverie Saigon , Ho Chi Minh City , Vietnam
FOOD & BEVERAGE
RETHINKING your restaurants
IF THE PANDEMICTAUGHT F & B LEADERS ONE THING IT ’ S THAT CONVENIENCE AND TRENDING ITEMS ARE BIG SELLERS WITH HOTEL GUESTS AND CAN EVEN ATTRACT MORE LOCALS .
Contributed by JEANETTE HURT
C
OVID-19 and the effects of the pandemic have spurred a lot of hoteliers to rethink their food and beverage spaces and decide to implement new concepts . Rethinking sometimes involves changing the entire restaurant , but other times , it involves gradual implementation . Often , it involves working with expert partners to get the job done .
Here are three hotels that accomplished restaurant changes successfully .
DA VITTORIO SAIGON , THE REVERIE SAIGON , HO CHI MINH CITY , VIETNAM Ever since The Reverie Saigon opened seven years ago , the hotel has had an Italian restaurant .
“ The owner of the hotel has a great love for Italy , and you can see this in the design of the hotel as a whole ,” says James Young , vice president of resource planning and development at the hotel .
The original restaurant was called Romeo and Juliet . “ It was a good restaurant , but restaurants have a certain lifespan , and the pandemic brought about a desire for change ,” Young says . “ There was this overall strategy to raise the food and beverage offering of the hotel .”
So , during the pandemic , the hotel reached out to Da Vittorio in Brusaporto , Italy , a three-Michelin-star restaurant with eight stars globally . Though the hotel had connected with the Italian owners in 2021 , both Vietnam and Italy had periodically gone through challenges such as 19 weeks of lockdown . So , it took a long time to just get a contract signed and work started . “ In a normal world , they would have been able to fly here , and we would have been able to do it in about a week ,” Young says .
The rebranding and the renovation were accomplished with extreme attention to detail . “ One of the key things we did was change the sense of arrival ,” Young explains .
The restaurant is located downstairs , and in the past , customers would walk down a staircase . That was replaced with an elevator . “ It ’ s a far more elegant approach ,” he says . “ They ’ re greeted by a hostess , and then taken down by lift into the restaurant . It enhances that sense of arrival that you are entering into this unique space .” The space itself also has been changed so that there ’ s more intimate seating in more private rooms that are available . There ’ s
78 hotelsmag . com Nov / Dec 2022