Dive Brief:

• Grubhub has partnered with Homewood Suites by Hilton to provide off-premise food options for guests through its app at about 500 locations around the country, the company said Thursday.
• Homewood Suites guests that don’t have any onsite dining options will be able to place orders from local eateries and convenience stores on Grubhub via geolocation and QR codes around their hotel that link to Grubhub’s Marketplace. 
• Grubhub partnered with its first hotel, Resorts World Las Vegas, in 2021, offering access to the resort’s 40 food and beverage and some retail shops via its app.

Dive Insight:

A pilot program at select Homewood Suites revealed high satisfaction with the delivery experience, including the speed of delivery, food packaging and delivery options like no-contact delivery, per the release. At checkout, the hotel location and delivery worker drop-off instructions will automatically populate.

“From our pilot of this program, we saw that orders from small and mid-sized businesses accounted for more than half of all orders,” Eric Ferguson, Grubhub COO, said in the release.

Homewood Suites guests who “affiliate with the hotel” will access a free month of Grubhub+, the company said. Grubhub has been expanding this loyalty subscription program, which offers $0 delivery for orders of $12 or more, through various partnerships. Earlier this month, it extended its free year of Grubhub+ offer for Amazon Prime members, a partnership that was originally introduced July 2022. 

Partnering with hotels could provide Grubhub with access to a captive audience. Hotels that work with the third-party delivery platform gain an in-room dining option if they don’t have one, which is the case for Homewood Suites, and gives their on-premise restaurants an additional ordering channel for pickup and room service, Adam Herbert, senior director of hospitality partnerships at Grubhub, said in a statement emailed to Restaurant Dive.

“Adding Grubhub ordering in hotels allows us to bring new diners to our platform, which in turn, helps drive more orders to our restaurant partners,” Herbert said. “The hospitality space affords us an opportunity to introduce new diners to Grubhub that may not have ordered food delivery before.”

The company said on its website that it also works with Omni Hotels & Resorts and The Strat. 

As hotel food and beverage continues to lag behind 2019 levels, other hotel brands have also partnered with delivery services. Marriott offers six Marriott Bonvoy points per dollar spent on Uber Eats while staying at a hotel within the Marriott portfolio. DoorDash has a partnership with Wyndham, and Hyatt Hotels launched a partnership with Gopuff in August 2021 that delivers drinks, snacks and groceries to guests.  

“Americans became extremely comfortable during the pandemic about getting food delivered to them, and this has transferred its way into the hotel industry,” American Hotel and Lodging Association President and CEO Chip Rogers previously told Hotel Dive.