Bartech Minibar Sales Continue Upward Trend as Hoteliers Seek Contactless Solutions to Offset Worker Shortages

 Bartech, the leader in automatic minibar solutions for the global hospitality industry, has announced details of its ongoing rapid sales growth as more hoteliers turn to advanced minibar solutions to address guest health safety needs and ensure the seamless flow of operations. From luxury brands to mid-scale and boutique properties, Bartech continues to receive an increasing number of inquiries and sales of its industry-leading technology, which is designed to seamlessly meet today’s guest demands for instant contactless convenience regardless of ongoing labor shortages.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Bartech’s portfolio of customers has steadily increased as more hoteliers have reached out to the company to learn how its line of minibars can offset declines in revenue and revamp a hotel’s offerings to align with the new industry climate. With an array of new clients that include properties associated with brands such as Ritz Carlton, InterContinental, Four Seasons and Waldorf Astoria, the company has noted that the increase in quote requests during 2021 has now surpassed pre-pandemic levels to become the best year of performance in the company’s history.

“Industry needs and service goals have shifted dramatically over the last couple of years, with a much greater focus on limiting touchpoint areas, while still delivering the quality of service and responsiveness that guests nonetheless expect,” said Bruno Agrario, VP of Sales and Marketing at Bartech. “To address this issue, experiences are now being tailored to provide guests with access to hotel offerings from the safety of their guestrooms. Advanced minibars with their guestroom-centric capabilities are proving to be ideally suited to the task. We are very proud of our global team’s efforts over the course of the pandemic in providing hoteliers with a more efficient, faster and safer approach towards catering to guest needs. We look forward to seeing more properties benefit from our solutions in maintaining high satisfaction rates and hotel profitability regardless of market labor conditions.”

With a range of minibar solutions that address virtually any type of hotel operation, to include fully automatic and semi-automatic minibars, as well as advanced software providing manual minibars with semi-automatic management capabilities, Bartech empowers a hotel’s staff to effortlessly keep pace with changing guests’ needs. In addition to minimizing any unnecessary contact between guests and employees that may impinge on social distancing, Bartech’s solutions also represent significant time-savings for F&B operations, which can often be impacted by a hotel’s level of available labor. Instead, Bartech’s innovative minibar technology drastically reduces the number of employees needed to run a profitable and responsive F&B service without requiring multiple visits to guestrooms throughout the course of a day. The company’s advanced minibar sensor technology ensures that hotel staff always know precisely which items and guestrooms need to be restocked, as well as which guestrooms maintain a full inventory, in order to sidestep unneeded visits. To further reduce the employee workload, Bartech minibars automatically detect item purchases and ensure accurate billing at the time of check-out. This eliminates yet another staff visit to the guestroom.

With 30 percent of guests consuming minibar items on average, automated Bartech minibar technology is further recognized with minimizing workloads by allowing a part-time attendant to perform the same level of productivity as two full-time employees. By minimizing the amount of work required of each staff member when it comes to minibar operations, Bartech solutions can also play a crucial role in maintaining employee satisfaction, wellbeing and loyalty.     

Alongside Bartech’s impressive growth in customer demand is the increasing trend of hoteliers utilizing minibars to offer contactless access to a diverse array of products that go beyond traditional F&B offerings. As hotels increasingly pivot towards offering guestroom-centric experiences, items once found in a hotel’s retail outlets may now be sold directly from the guestroom, including toiletries, electronics and dry snacks. This is made possible by innovations such as Bartech’s eTray solution, which can provide all of the benefits of automatic minibar technology for virtually any item not suited for refrigeration.