The hospitality and leisure industry is experiencing a revival following a tumultuous few years. But once you've enticed customers in, how do you get them to stick around and spend more cash?
Upgrading your interiors and prioritising those small finishing touches can make all the difference, says Bethany Walker, head of design at Styled Interior Design. There is a lot of competition in the hospitality and leisure industry, so it’s essential to find ways to stand out from the crowd. Interior design is a huge part of the customer experience, and a carefully designed space can mean the difference between having a quick meal and leaving or sticking around for dessert and extra drinks. But often it’s the small, finishing touches, the ones that bring a look together, that create the most excitement.
Tying a space together
Accessories are the name of the game here. Think colour-coordinated napkins, candles, flowers and vases. These elements of layered design really emphasise and complement a wider theme, whilst creating a striking, effortless backdrop to your customers’ food photoshoot. If your restaurant is cosy, think plush cushions, musk-scented candles and dainty glass vases with injections of green foliage. For fun and colourful themes, think coloured shaped vases, floral scents and cascades of brightly coloured flowers to ensure your restaurant’s personality shines through.
But you don’t need to stop there. Your finishing touches could extend to the doorknobs on the bathroom doors, water decanters on the table or quirky salt and pepper shakers. And the glasses, crockery and cutlery you choose are just as important too. Just make sure the space doesn’t end up feeling too cluttered.
So, once you’ve chosen your finishing touches, how do you guarantee they get you customers?
Get on social media
If you’ve spent time and effort crafting a beautiful space for people to enjoy, shout about it on social media!
According to research by Zizzi, 18 – 35-year-olds spend five whole days a year browsing food and restaurants on social media, and 30 per cent would avoid a restaurant if their Instagram presence was weak. Many social media users decide on the food they are going to order before they’ve even set foot in the door – relying on beautiful images to help them out. If that’s not enough to get you reaching for your phone, perhaps this will – 69 per cent of millennial diners take a photo of their food before eating it. Now you see why it pays to invest in your finishing touches.
Social media is one of the best ways to market your hospitality venue, if not the best way. It’s free, easy to set up and has a captive audience. In fact, 4.62 billion people now use social media on a regular basis – that’s over half of the world’s population. Not only that but there are hundreds of food and restaurant influencers with large, trusting audiences who can do your marketing for you. Many restauranteurs actively create spaces that will match the ‘Instagram aesthetic’. Yes, those little squares are more important than ever for the hospitality industry.
Investing in the finishing touches can make a big difference to how you appear on social media. A quick google search of ‘Instagram restaurants’ gives thousands of results including profiles of the best restaurants on the platform, and blogs on the most ‘Instagrammable’ and ‘prettiest’ restaurants.
You may be wondering if this still applies to you if you don’t have a large millennial or Gen Z customer base, but just remember that millennials are now the biggest adult cohort worldwide, accounting for 23 per cent of the population. If you’re not targeting millennials with your interior design, maybe you should be