Hotel F&B stops being an extra in 2027 budgets

For years hotel F&B has lived in a comfortable zone. It was budgeted as a guest service, almost a cost you absorbed so the stay did not feel incomplete. IRIS has just published its seven investment priorities to get the restaurant and bar out of the annex column and behaving like a proper line of business alongside rooms.

The idea behind the document is simple and, to me, right. Guests no longer book a bed. They book an experience, and a good chunk of that experience is decided at the table. If the hotel does not own breakfast, dinner or the late drink, someone else will. The priorities IRIS lays out point to technology, data, margins per outlet and an offering designed as a sellable product, not as an in-house service.

My read is that this opens an interesting door for independent hotels and mid-size chains. Well-run F&B holds up better against seasonality than rooms do. It forces you to understand real costs, measure average ticket per daypart and cross-reference bookings with spending. That is where revenue management still has room to explore. Whoever gets it right in 2027 will not have turned a cost into revenue. They will have found a new business inside the hotel itself.