This week I’m in Nashville for the Hotel Data Conference, which Hotel News Now produces with STR, and we’re happy to be back in person — with an online element to the conference — at the Omni Nashville Hotel.

We typically have a lot of repeat attendees at this event, so we have a core fan base of people very familiar with how the event runs. Among those repeat attendees, the first question they’ve asked me when I've spoken with any of them recently is “Will there be a bacon bar this year?”

See, one year during our opening reception at Hotel Data Conference, the host hotel set up a bacon station. Some of the bacon was on skewers. Some was pinned to a clothesline of sorts. You could sprinkle on some toppings, dunk it in chocolate, add it to a sandwich or just stand in front of the station and cram it into your mouth, like the football team did at my college dining hall on game-day mornings.

Every year in the post-event survey, attendees mention the food, and that’s the case with every event I’ve produced in my career. Sometimes it’s a compliment, sometimes it’s a complaint, but people always talk about the food.

So I wasn’t surprised at all when I read in this year’s J.D. Power 2021 North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study that hotel guests in 2020 were dissatisfied with hotel food and beverage, particularly at breakfast.

First off, to those complaining hotel guests, I say no duh. “Pandemic” and “build your own omelet station” don’t really belong in the same sentence. Hoteliers, you did the best you could and none of this dissatisfaction is on you.

But what I think this does is open the door for what I’m going to predict will be a hotel breakfast renaissance.

I’m sure those of you catering to leisure guests already have seen this, as vacationers descend upon your properties after a travel dry spell, likely looking to snatch up any stale bagel in sight.

Some hotels and chains are reinstating standard breakfast offerings and service styles, but given virus spikes and alarming shortages in equipment and even food shipments, it’s going to take a long while for breakfast — and full hotel food and beverage — to pick up where it left off.

So the industry stands at a bit of a crossroads. It’s pretty much a given now that hotel housekeeping services as we know them will change in large and small ways, so what about breakfast? Housekeeping and free breakfast models of course are the same in some ways and different in others. You don’t need as many people to execute free breakfast as you do to clean hotel guestrooms, but I don't really know how costs factor in. What's more expensive, individual Philadelphia cream cheese packets or a bottle of Windex? Either way, both are amenities that pre-pandemic were taken for granted and included in the price of the room. And just as how the industry talks now about charging for stayover housekeeping, many executives have said they’d like to see a charge for breakfast, even at places that historically offered it free.

The breakfast model always has been a little strange at U.S. hotels. Stay at a Hampton by Hilton and it’s free. Stay next time at a Courtyard by Marriott and you’re paying for coffee. Yes, different brands have standards, but only the road warrior diehard travelers ever really knew what to expect.

My forecast — and this really is only a guess after all — is that we’re about to see massive free breakfast wars.

As we’ve established, people get vocal about food, particularly breakfast. I truly don’t believe the traveling public will let free hotel breakfast go. It’s too embedded into the uniquely American traveler value proposition: A hotel breakfast that’s boring but free will always rank higher among guests than a hotel breakfast that’s exciting but expensive.

I really don’t think this applies just to cheap leisure vacationers, either. Think about it — free breakfast is always self-serve and quick. Paid breakfast is typically a sit-down affair where you wait for a server, or order at a counter then wait for someone to take your credit card and call out your name. Even business travelers with fat corporate accounts will value time saved over time spent.

Again, just my gut. But once the industry approaches more normalcy, breakfast will be back with a vengeance and the hotels that keep it free and pretty satisfying will come out ahead.

Think I'm all wrong? Let me know: Email me, or find me on Twitter or LinkedIn to let me know.

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