For today’s hotel food and beverage guests, there’s no such thing as “too convenient.” Guests expect to be able to access meal and beverage service anywhere — tableside, poolside or in-room — and hotels need to deliver frictionless ordering and billing to create an enticing guest experience.
Delivering an experience that appears seamless, though, relies on operational excellence. To meet guests’ expectations, leaders need to address all the inefficiencies that can trickle down to guests: From errors in ordering to suboptimal staffing during peak times.
And they’re looking to technology for help.
Handheld point of sale (POS) technology has become a key tool for operators to meet guest’s expectations, help boost operational efficiency and unlock revenue to fuel long-term growth.
New research, conducted by Hotel and Restaurant Dive's Studio by Informa TechTarget in partnership with Toast and FreedomPay, sheds light on how handhelds are shifting the landscape of hotel food and beverage — and how leaders are leveraging the technology to help unlock double-digit revenue growth, greater operational efficiency and a stronger customer experience.
Get the report: “The New Standard of Convenience: How handheld POS tech is redefining service in restaurants and hotels.”
The state of handheld POS technology in hospitality food and beverage today
Handheld POS devices are widely adopted across restaurants, food service, and hotel food and beverage. Of the 150 leaders surveyed for the report — including 75 restaurant/food service executives and 75 executives in hotel food and beverage whose organizations use handheld POS technology — 83% say they’ve already scaled the technology across most or all locations.
So far, hotel food and beverage leaders indicate that adoption has centered around billing and payments. All hotel food and beverage respondents indicated that their organizations use handheld POS technology to process payments, while 97% say they’re using the tech for guest billing integration and posting charges and 92% using handheld POS technology for applying discounts, packages or promotions.
Hotel food and beverage leaders are also leveraging handheld POS technology to meet customer demands to “order from anywhere.” More than nine in 10 (93%) are using handhelds to enable in-room or poolside ordering and service — and embed access to food and beverage service seamlessly into the customer journey.
Adopters are realizing significant gains — including double-digit topline growth
Guest experience and operational efficiency are several of the driving forces behind embracing handheld POS technology. And leaders report significant improvements on both fronts, as well as a sizable boost to financial performance.
More than two-thirds (68%) of surveyed executives handheld POS technology has had a “very significant” or "transformational" impact on the guest experience. These gains are powered by the ability to deliver faster service (85%), improve order accuracy (73%) and create a smoother dining or service flow (73%).
On the operations side, 74% of surveyed executives said handheld POS technology has had a “very significant” or "transformational" impact on operational performance. More than four in five said they were able to improve the speed and efficiency of service (83%), and over half said they better handle peak periods and high-volume service (59%) and boost staff productivity and task management (57%).
The end result: Stronger financial performance overall
Both guest experience and operational efficiencies help drive positive financial outcomes. And leaders say handheld POS technology has helped both manage costs and drive significant revenue growth.
Roughly six in 10 surveyed executives (59%) report that deploying handheld POS technology boosted revenue by at least 10%. However, several leaders saw even larger gains: 37% increased revenue by 10-14%, and 22% increased revenue by 15% or more.
How innovators are unlocking additional value
Although handheld POS technology is already boosting outcomes across hotel food and beverage, leaders have opportunities to fuel additional growth. And our research highlighted several emerging use cases for handheld POS technology that have yet to be widely adopted.
Data as a differentiator
Innovators in hotel food and beverage are looking beyond ordering and payments and leveraging handheld POS technology as a valuable source of data.
They’re using the devices as a point to request customer data to improve and expand guest programs, curating the insights they need to deliver more integrated, personalized service. And they’re also using handheld POS technology as a source of operational data — for example, to benchmark performance during peak periods and identify potential areas for improvement.
Supporting operational speed and agility
Innovators are also looking to handheld POS technology to help hotel food and beverage staff manage operations in real time. A sizable minority (43%) say they’re using handhelds for task management and service requests, allowing staff to manage operations without leaving the restaurant or bar floor.
Additionally, roughly half of hotel food and beverage leaders (49%) are using handheld POS technology to update menus in real time — so hotels can easily roll out limited edition offerings, update menus to reflect seasonal ingredient availability, or proactively remove out-of-stock menu items that could otherwise complicate the ordering experience.
Unlocking more flexible guest experiences
While surveyed hotel food and beverage leaders have broadly deployed handheld POS technology for in-room and poolside ordering, innovators are taking convenience a step further and enabling guests to access food and beverage service from anywhere on the property.
This allows hotels to deliver truly immersive and seamless experiences for guests, whether they’re seeking to pre-order dinner from the back nine or arranging lunch from the hotel meeting room.
Get the insights you need to maximize ROI from handheld POS technology
Handheld POS technology is already transforming how guests engage with hotel food and beverage service and powering stronger operational and financial performance. And leaders can unlock even more value by tapping into innovative-yet-underutilized use cases — if they can select the right technologies and deploy them effectively.
“The New Standard of Convenience: How handheld POS tech is redefining service in restaurants and hotels” shares insights from industry executives on how to maximize value from handheld POS technology, illuminating how hotel food and beverage readers can leverage the right solutions to fuel growth.
