It wasn’t just the range and thoughtfulness of the QT selection that struck me, but also the fact commentators were, around the same time, sounding the death knell for in-room liquor cabinets. “The hotel minibar is dying; long live the nearby convenience store,” CNN announced in 2014. A few years later The New York Timeschimed in with, “Drink Up… The Minibar is on the Way Out”.
It’s true that minibars are vanishing at big chains such as Marriott and Hilton, a trend perhaps accelerated by the hotel-hygiene obsessions of the Covid era (and perhaps also by the hotels’ own greed in charging so excessively for everyday items). Last year accommodation giant Accor announced it was axing personal refreshment centres from more than 50,000 hotel rooms across France.
But while minibars might be dying off in mass-market properties, at the higher, boutique end of the hotel ladder they’re still very much alive – and morphing into many-splendoured things.
Ovolo Hotels, like QT, offer an eclectic choice of indulgences, with the bonus that everything’s already been priced into your room rate. So go crazy on the beer, wine, soft drinks and snacks. It’s nothing too fancy, but it’s all “free” so who’s complaining?
Ovolo founder Girish Jhunjhnuwala reckons it’s “unfriendly” of hoteliers to add convenience-store mark-ups to impulse purchases. “If you’re paying for the room, everything in the room should be yours,” he says, quite sensibly.
But giving stuff away for free is not why minibars became popular in the first place. When the Hong Kong Hilton pioneered them in 1974, the hotel’s overall profits famously jumped by five per cent. Pretty soon everyone wanted a piece of that overpriced pistachio sachet.
Obviously Ovolo, with its free treats, is not doing it for the profits. Instead, like many design-driven hotels, it uses the minibar to express its character. But it’s also, as group director of marketing Stephen Howard puts it, about giving guests “an effortless stay”.
“Happy guests equal loyal guests,” says Howard, who loves a great minibar, free or not. “I think you’ll see big chain hotels move away from minibars because it’s not about personality. Designer hotels will move towards a more curated experience that expresses character and the in-room experience.”
That character can take all forms. Bars in the nine tented suites of Jack’s Camp in Botswana channel colonial indulgence with their crystal-ware and silverware, full bottles of liquor – Amarula, whisky, Okavango gin – alongside wines, beers, biltong and an ice bucket that is always, magically, full.
At the Pink Hotel in Coolangatta on the Gold Coast, my sea-facing corner suite featured a full-blown cocktail bar beneath a pink neon artwork declaring “I dig it when you speak the way that you do”. The vibe was all very rock ’n’ roll, accented by a turntable, a Yamaha speaker and vinyl albums by the likes of Springsteen and (Paul) Simon. There were tinned cocktails, bottled wines and beers aplenty, and Panadol and oral rehydration solutions to take the edge off the morning after.
Smart hotels realise that one sure way to differentiate themselves from the crowd is to reflect their precise place in the world, and an easy way to do that is through the minibar. So it’s out with the multinational brands; in with the bespoke ginger beer, the hyperlocal wines and the fudge made by Sally down the road.
At Silky Oaks Lodge in the Daintree, new owners Baillie Lodges introduced minibars (for the first time in almost four decades) stocked with locally brewed beer and coffee and cheese from the Atherton Tablelands. Thick, crumbly biscuits – a gift to guests from the kitchen – are flavoured with lemon myrtle and local vanilla and are so decadent you’d never guess they’re gluten-free.
Even more rustic establishments like The Farmhouse at Meletos in Victoria’s Yarra Valley have got the memo. Rooms in this modern Provençal-style farmhouse come with vineyard views and hyperlocal help-yourselves such as yo-yo biscuits, peanut brittle and house-made syrah, sauvignon blanc and Yumbo lemonade.
All of which suggests that the (old) minibar is dead. Long live the new minibar.
