MARRIOTT International is partnering with Alibaba’s food-delivery service platform Ele.me to deliver food and beverages from 130 or so multi-starred hotels across 49 cities to the tables at guests’ homes, according to an official announcement released May 15. Through the partnership, Marriott International aims to widen the spectrum of scenarios in hotel consumption and reach more guests and foodies by providing them with high-quality, safe food. The participating hotel restaurants have conducted a thorough market research on guests’ preferences for food in order to provide affordable yet convenient services. The hotel group is making sure that an ordered-in meal doesn’t mean that the food quality and standards are compromised. On the contrary, the culinary teams have designed over 1,000 styles of dishes for guests to choose from, including classic dishes, Chinese- and Western-style set meals, bentos and seasonal selections, all designed to cater to the different eating habits and taste buds of guests. The hotel group has made flexible policies to better satisfy foodies’ needs of different time periods for meals. For example, The Westin Qingdao provides business set meals to white-collar workers during lunch hour, featuring braised beef in sauce, shredded pork with garlic sauce and seasonal green vegetables. During dinner time, the hotel brings signature Qingdao-style dishes to the dinner tables of locals. Hotels have also presented a variety of set meals to satisfy taste buds of different guests. Guangzhou Marriott Hotel Tianhe offers authentic Cantonese-style set meals, bentos and South East Asian dishes. The Sheraton Shanghai Jiading Hotel offers authentic Shanghai home-made flaky pastries. To spare busy workers the joy of cooking without taking up too much of their time, some hotels present semi-finished dishes such as wontons and fish and tofu soup. Richard Taffs, vice president of operations at Marriott International in China, explains “this collaboration is to combine the professional experience of Marriott International Food & Beverage, a strong brand portfolio and strict food quality control, with the rich channels and technology-driven innovation capabilities of Ele.me in the Chinese market, thus bringing starred hotel dishes to dinner tables of people’s homes, aiming to provide guests with a secure, attentive and flexible dining experience at home.” (Yang Mei) | 