The Stamba Hotel in Tbilisi, Georgia, furnishes each room with a €4000 La Marzocco Linea espresso machine and ethically sourced, organic coffee beans roasted in-house.
Today’s travelers are increasingly discerning. Thread count and designer decor aren’t enough to attract new guests. Modern consumers crave unique experiences and local connections. As a result, many hotels now partner with specialty coffee brands to offer distinctive, community-driven experiences. Whether through high-end in-room coffee bars, local roasters, and cafes in-house, or membership programs, specialty coffee breathes new life into the hotel industry.
Easy access to third-party review sites detailing every feature a hotel offers allows potential guests to search for exactly what’s important to them. And good coffee is at the top of that list. A survey conducted by UCC Coffee UK & Ireland in 2014 revealed that 75% of 1,000 hotel guests interviewed were unhappy with the quality of their in-room coffee. Thirty percent said they would not return to a hotel if the coffee were bad.
In 2020, Clio Coffee surveyed 2,093 Americans about their coffee-consuming habits while traveling. Nearly 60% said that the availability of good coffee at a hotel or Airbnb rental was important to them. Fifty percent responded that they bring their own coffee while traveling because good coffee on the road is hard to find.
In an interview with Hotelier magazine, Robert Carter, president of the Coffee Association of Canada, said, “From a hotel standpoint, there seems to be more of a focus on the coffee program. People are seeing this as an opportunity for the value-added guest experience, and also a good point of difference…If you’re a larger hotel chain and you haven’t evolved your coffee program, consumers are really noticing now.”
Coffee is more than just a drink. It’s a sacred morning ritual that’s vital to the consumer's day. As specialty coffee rose to prominence in the early 2,000s, many hotels took notice. The Ace Hotel group was among the first to open properties featuring in-house Stumptown Coffee roasters and cafes in their Lobbies, attracting both out-of-town and local patrons. Since then, the number of partnerships between major hotel brands and independent specialty coffee companies has increased dramatically.
Lobby coffee shops were just the beginning. Now, hotels are racing to collaborate with coffee equipment brands and plant-based milk companies to create the most advanced self-service coffee bars. Philly’s Roost Apartment Hotel stocks each in-room coffee bar with $750 worth of equipment. A Roost guest can grind their own La Colombe Coffee beans in a Baratza Virtuoso Grinder, then heat their Vero filtered water to a perfect 205°F in a Bonavita Gooseneck Electric Kettle before pouring it through a glass Chemex Coffee maker resting atop a Hario Drip Scale.
The Stamba Hotel in Tbilisi, Georgia, not only offers local residents and remote workers the best co-working space in the country by serving ethically sourced, organic, in-house roasted coffee from Venezuela, Madagascar, Costa Rica, and Colombia but also furnishes each room with a €4000 La Marzocco Linea espresso machine.
Hotels are using specialty coffee to bring together locals and residents, creating integrated community spaces that offer travelers deeper connections. They also arrange farm visits, coffee tastings, and workshops on sustainable practices.
Once the bane of coffee shops, remote workers are now highly sought after. Chic hotel lobby co-working spaces and membership coffee programs offering complimentary drinks entice digital nomads and office-free workers. Ennismore’s innovative Disloyalty Membership program infuses their hotels with an attractive, vibrant energy.
“I’ve been fascinated for a long while by subscription models that also offer a community,” Ennismore founder and co-CEO Sharan Pasricha told Fast Company. The once-daily free barista drink benefit “is really a nod to folks who literally work near one of our hotels or coffee shops.”
In a recent Medium post, hospitality product and strategy specialist, Mathias Coudert stated “Hotels are expanding their horizons beyond room revenue, reimagining spaces to offer more than just accommodations.” By transforming hotels into destinations, Coudert says “[specialty] coffee emerges as the enchanting force uniting locals and guests, orchestrating a harmonious crescendo in the symphony of overall hotel revenue.”