Will Hotel Breakfast Buffets Return? With COVID-19, most hotels worldwide have stopped serving breakfast buffets. As we site inspect several luxury hotels this week, experiencing the myriad changes occasioned by the pandemic, the missing breakfast buffet is perhaps the change we miss most.
In both of the luxury hotels we've stayed at so far during our current site inspection trip, there were significant waits (over 15 minutes) to be seated for breakfast, and also long waits for breakfast to be served. Admittedly, it's a busy time (spring break), but in a buffet scenario, at least the time between ordering and being served would be eliminated.
- Convenience: With the breakfast buffet, there was no waiting around for a server to take your order, or for the dish to be made. If you had only 15 minutes for breakfast, no problem.
- Variety: With the better luxury hotel breakfast buffets, the plethora of options can be daunting, but it also led to some of our favorite eclectic breakfasts: sushi, Maldivian fish curry, fresh passionfruit, kouign-amann, bircher muesli all on one plate? Yes please!
- Just the Right Amount: With a buffet, there's no guessing whether you've ordered too little or too much: you can take exactly the amount you're hungry for.
- Feasting with the Eyes: It's hard to deny the pure visual appeal of the best hotel breakfast buffets, with the riot of color and artistic presentation. It's also attractive to be able to see what you're getting at a buffet, rather than have to guess from a menu description.
Here's the pre-pandemic breakfast buffet at Velaa private island in the Maldives:
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Can Hotel Buffet Risks Be Mitigated?
Most of the risk of hotel buffets stem not from food contamination but from social distancing concerns and shared touch points. Hotels and restaurants are right to be concerned about crowded situations, especially indoors, when guests may not be socially distancing and there could be aerosol transmission of COVID-19. Shared touch points are a lesser concern, since there isn't as much risk of COVID-19 transmission from fomites, but this is also something hotels could easily mitigate.
Our experience at the Hamilton Princess (a Fairmont Hotel) in Bermuda, where a breakfast buffet was served (due to a major golf tournament resulting in a large group of golfers staying at the hotel) points out several best practices hotels could use to bring back buffets:
- All guests must wear face masks when not seated at their dining table
- The buffet is uni-directional
- All buffet items are served to guests by hotel staff who are masked and wear gloves. Guests indicate which items they would like.
Now, admittedly during busy times this could get slow if there's only a single buffet line, depending on the number of guests. It may be that hotels need to start staggering breakfast times, at least during peak seasons, by allowing guests to make breakfast reservations at the time they book their stay (or by setting up additional buffet lines during their busiest seasons).
We could also envision some self-serve stations where all items were pre-packaged or enclosed, such as yogurts or covered containers of fresh fruit, cheese, glass ramekins of granola, etc.
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In the meantime, we hope that more resorts will provide some kind of deli with a grab and go option, because waiting 15-20 minutes just to be seated for breakfast plus the additional time to have an a la carte order taken and prepared is just too much time to be waiting around, at least for some guests.
What do you think? Which luxury hotel breakfast buffet do you miss most?
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Of course they will come back.
I think they will come back. Hotels could temporarily save some money by “surprising” guests with a leaner-than-expected breakfast experience. But as always, what applies is “fool me once…fool me twice…”
Hotel breakfasts are a high-margin business IF people actually pay for the breakfast. The customers like buffets (for the reasons you gave). And hotels like them–particular in countries where the wages of low-skilled workers are high–as they less labor-intensive than service that’s 100% a la carte/table service.
I don’t think “self-serve” buffets will ever com back in my lifetime. Traditional buffets will likely be replaced with “point & serve” buffets handed to you at the end of a line. This will apply to airline lounges as well. Sneeze-guards and common serving utensils just won’t cut it anymore….
Yes, it will be interesting to see the various solutions. Of the four Hawaii luxury resorts we’ve inspected over the past few days, only Four Seasons Hualalai is offering a breakfast buffet, which to your point is primarily point and serve, with staff and guests all masked and sneeze guard barriers. That said, a few items were self serve: covered glass containers of juices and yogurt parfaits.
I love Vegas except it takes too long to find places to eat. – I really hated that because it took away some of the fun of the trip
Once the pandemic ends, they could. Buffets were typically safe for 70 years; I can’t imagine 2 years of a pandemic (one not spread by contaminated food) will permanently kill them.
Well I live in ny where my governor has about killed any kind of restaurant eating.
People who go on vacation really miss the buffets. Hopefully it will come back if not it’s really going to hurt businesses in the long run.
Fortunately some resorts have figured out how to bring back breakfast buffets safely: of the six Hawaii luxury resorts we recently inspected, three of them had brought back breakfast buffets, using a combination of staff serving guests from buffets, certain items cooked to order, and in one case some completely individually wrapped or covered self-serve items.
@Hilary, curious to know which three hotels had the breakfast buffets and what you thought of them? Were they well executed from a health safety, service and food standpoint? I’m a big fan of well done breakfast buffets and was eyeing the FS Lanai for a post-vaccination trip, but they’re no longer doing breakfast buffets so keen to hear your thoughts on this.
Sam, the three hotels during our recent Hawaii site inspection stays that had breakfast buffets were the Four Seasons Hualalai, Andaz Maui, and Four Seasons Maui. The Andaz’s only option was the buffet, while Four Seasons Hualalai and Four Seasons Maui also offered a la carte options. They were all well executed from a health and food standpoint, and service was strong at the Four Seasons properties, while more mixed at the Andaz since at least on one of our mornings it was hard to find our server and slow to get the cooked to order items, while the other… Read more »