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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 over.
The best hotels in the world now understand that their F&B programme is not a support function. It is the anchor of their brand strategy. It is the primary reason people book, return, recommend, and feel something when they think about a property.
This is not a trend. It is a structural shift in how hotel brands compete.
The commoditisation of hotel product, the room, the bed, the amenities, has made brand differentiation harder. Across most market segments, the physical product difference between competing properties has narrowed. OTA platforms have made rate comparison frictionless. Loyalty programmes have become interchangeable.
In this environment, the brands that create genuine preference do so through experience and culture. And nothing creates culture inside a hotel faster or more effectively than a genuinely good restaurant, bar, or F&B concept.
Look at the properties that have become cultural landmarks: the Aman Tokyo lobby bar, the Claridge's dining room, the Mercer Bar in New York, the pool restaurant at the Setai in Miami. None of these are amenities. They are reasons to choose the hotel.
In Dubai, this dynamic is accelerating. The city's F&B scene has become one of the most competitive in the world, and the hotels that have built genuine F&B identities, independent of their room product, have become the ones that locals visit, media covers, and guests return to.
The anchor effect works on three levels. First, the restaurant or bar drives hotel bookings directly: guests who discover and love the F&B concept become hotel guests. Second, it drives earned media: a genuinely interesting restaurant is a story. A hotel room is not. Third, it drives cultural relevance: the right F&B concept positions the hotel as a participant in the city's cultural life, not just a place to sleep.
The brands that understand this are building their F&B strategy as an integral component of their brand strategy, not as an operational line item.
If you are building or repositioning a hotel brand, the F&B strategy is not a separate conversation from the brand conversation. It is the same conversation. The story the hotel tells, the culture it creates, the guests it attracts, and the media coverage it generates will all flow through the F&B programme as much as through anything else.
Example works with hotels and hospitality groups on integrated brand and F&B strategy. If you are navigating this challenge, we would welcome the conversation.
