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By Andy El-Bayeh, CEO of Example
For decades, the restaurant inside a hotel was infrastructure. A tick-box amenity. Something guests tolerated before leaving to find somewhere worth eating.
That era is finished.
In Sydney, Melbourne, Dubai, Singapore and London, the on-site restaurant is no longer the support act. It has become the cultural anchor of the entire asset. The thing people book a hotel for. The thing they return for. The thing they tell others about.
We call this the Anchor Effect, and the hotels that understand it are pulling ahead of every other metric that used to matter.
For most of hospitality’s history, the logic was clean. More heads in beds equalled more revenue. Occupancy, ADR, RevPAR. The metrics were universally understood and universally applied.
Those metrics still matter. But the better question now is: what is the Return on Experience?
ROE reframes F&B from cost centre to value driver. The proof is concrete: 60% of high-end travellers now prioritise dining quality when choosing where to stay. That preference correlates directly with a 40% lift in positive reviews and measurable ADR growth.
A restaurant that carries a genuine point of view doesn’t just fill seats. It enhances the perceived value of every room above it. A dining destination that draws locals also stabilises revenue, insulating the asset against the economic and seasonal volatility that hotels relying purely on transient tourism remain permanently exposed to.
We are living through what might be called the Anti-Social Century. Algorithms flatten experience. Technology has made life smoother and, in doing so, quietly eroded the unplanned moments that create genuine human connection.
The opportunity for hotel owners is not to become a better third space. It is to become a modern village centre.
This requires intentional social design: a listening bar with a devoted music following, a café anchored by a running club, a dining room synonymous with a particular creative cohort. Communal tables, visible kitchens, service rituals designed to be seen and remembered. These create meaningful friction — moments that a frictionless algorithm can never anticipate and never replicate.
Belonging outlasts novelty every time.
The age of anonymous all-day dining is behind us.
Guests can identify generic from the street. They want to feel a place was made for them — not assembled for everyone. In our work, this means we don’t build concepts. We build narratives.
Not “Italian restaurant in a hotel lobby.” But: what precise cultural moment are we inhabiting?
At Bar Allora in Sydney, the creative direction centred on post-war Milanese optimism: Italian Futurism, the velocity of 1950s espresso culture, a city rebuilding itself and believing in its future. At El Vista, the lens was 1960s Acapulco glamour — jet-set nostalgia, champagne sunsets, a very specific kind of beautiful recklessness.
Specificity generates memorability. In a market where a brand must either operate with ruthless efficiency or deliver genuine cultural value, neutrality is the fastest route to irrelevance.
Hotels that will define the next era measure atmosphere as carefully as they measure occupancy. They invest in chefs as strategic partners, not tenants. They understand that the dining room is not a service. It is a position.
In a market saturated with beautifully designed bedrooms, the differentiator is no longer thread count. It is cultural gravity.
The future of hotels will not be defined by the pillow. It will be defined by the pull.
