Legal Law

Why you need to check your minibar

Having a minibar is convenient for your guests and provides additional income for your business. However, a minibar takes a bit of work! First of all, you should select products that sell well, products that your guests like to drink and enjoy as a small snack (ask me for my minibar list). There are many popular products that guests recognize and know how they taste. These are products that you should definitely have in your minibar. As such, your first step is choosing the right products for your minibar and purchasing them. Quantity also plays an important role. Sometimes there are days when most of the minibars in the rooms remain intact, so the demand is quite low. That is not a problem, except if the products do not have a valid expiration date for a long time.

The valid expiration date is a factor that you really need to consider. Once you have purchased the products and have them in your hosting business, you should use an Excel sheet to record all valid expiration dates for all products. It seems like a lot of work and to be honest it is. However, if you don’t have an Excel sheet with a valid expiration date, chances are you will experience complaints from your guests. There will be guests urging you to check the expiration dates of the products in your minibar. Some guests will even consume the product and then refuse to pay for it due to the fact that the product was expired. This doesn’t sound fair, but it is.

In fact, you have to stay ahead of the game. You need to know when each of your products expires so you can easily exchange them. By keeping track of expiration dates, you know exactly when you need to buy new products or when you can offer 50% discounts on select products.

Keep in mind that an expired product can have very bad results for you. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that guests include this detail in their online comments about an OTA. Guests almost always write more about the details they didn’t like too much rather than the services they enjoyed. If a potential new guest reads reviews with details about expired products, they won’t make a good impression. Potential new guests will connect that information with all of your services. Even though your hosting looks amazing, information about expired products will remain in the back of their minds.

Implementing a minibar is a great service if you follow and are responsible for the different expiration dates that your products have.

Tip: If you can’t get rid of your products that expire in two days, feel free to give them to your staff, your retiring guests, or children at a nearby school. Any of them is much better than just throwing out expired products.

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