Menu engineering - a hospitality marketing strategy for profitability and sales enhancemnet Mohanty P. P., Rout Himanshu Bhusan Asst. Professor, Department of Hotel Management and Tourism, School of Hotel Management, Faculty of Hotel Management, Siksha O Anusandhan University, Odisha, Bhubaneswar, 751030 Online published on 2 July, 2015. Abstract In the era of globalization, the hospitality business is soaring high, so the competitors of the hotels in the same level have the tremendous numbers in the same time. The Indian hospitality sector has wide dimension from domestic and international level, hence it is marked by intense competition. Each and every hotels, resorts, motels and restaurants try their level best to contribute their profit margin in every areas of their f &b service operation. Under this backdrop the hospitality business has to be sustained and grow in lieu of stiff competition, so the marketing strategy comes into forefront for these purposes. Implementing traditional marketing strategies which focuses only the enjoyable stay of customers does not serve the purpose of withstanding the completion and also the profitability and sales enhancement. Hence more emphasis is on retaining and fetching more customers rather than finding the new ones is the call of the hour through the alternative way. In order to achieve this, the hotels must develop innovative and competitive hospitality marketing strategies in the core department where the customer's interaction and involvement is more, thereby profitability and sales increasement leads the way. Though the other measure departments of the hotels contribute for revenue generation and sales concept, but the most significant and large department of the hospitality business is food and beverage production department. The main revenue of the hotel comes from the room divisions department and food and beverage department (krippendorf, 1987) so this research topic chooses to focus and discuss on the food and beverage issue to maximize the revenue of the hotel by alluring more and more guest through the food and beverage revolution. Hospitality business faces many problems which cause the low margin of the revenue that can be low service standard, the mismatch of the menu and the target group of the guests, even a lack of promotion to captivate the customer in the low season. This research work is centered around and in between the food and beverage production, so the list of the food or called menu comes into the play, and the research works paves the way for the solution of this problem through menu engineering programme, as menu or bill of fare is the most favorable marketing tool in hospitality business. In the hospitality business food is the most perishable product which is sold through menu, and menu for the hotel and restaurants is the most pivotal index. Hence menu always determines the profit and loss of the hotel operation. So this research paper focused on the problems of mismatch of items or dishes placed in the menu, which ultimately decreases down the footfalls during the business hour, and finds the way for increasing the volume of business by modifying the menu items with the help of menu engineering programme. Top Keywords HOSPITALITY, ENHANCEMNET, GLOBALIZATION, MENU, ENGINEERING. Top |