Hotel group bets on new dining model to draw customers

The Sayari All Day Dining Restaurant, which was officially opened on Friday 19/07/2024 at PrideInn Westlands Luxury Boutiqe Hotel. [James Wanzala, Standard]

Hotel chain PrideInn is banking on specialty restaurants to boost business and improve dining and customers’ experience.

This was revealed on Friday evening when the company officially launched the first specialty restaurant, Sayari (planet in Kiswahili) at PrideInn Westlands, Nairobi.

The restaurant will serve both walk-in and resident customers with a variety of world cuisines, drinks and music.

“This is our own little planet, as the name Sayari means, that allows people from all cultures, tribes, countries and continents to come to one location and be themselves, have food and drinks that they can enjoy and relate with,” said PrideInn Hotels, Resorts and Camps managing director Hasnain Noorani.

He said they had several trials in the past two months to perfect their cuisine and hosted Greek and Bollywood nights.

In November last year, he said, they had a rebrand from budget hotels to luxury and premium brand and one of the things they decided to do was to be a people-oriented brand.

“We want to create relationship with customers, community around our hotels and partners and as part of understanding and creating that relationship, we realised that our customers were not just looking for food and drinks but also they want showbiz in terms of how is food being served and thus decided to give them an innovative dining experience with a specialty restaurant,” said Noorani.

He said already there are more two specialty restaurants in the pipeline for their hotels that will be launched within one or two months.

The restaurant has introduced a unique “selfieccino”, which allows customers to take a picture or give the message they wish and the chefs make it appear on top of their coffee of choice.

Noorani said the PrideInn Group has grown in a span of 12 years from one budget hotel of 28 rooms to eight hotels with over 900 rooms with conference capacities of over 15,000 with over 1,500 people within the entire hotel chain.   

He said the hotel group has aggressive expansion plans to be present in all counties to create more job opportunities for Kenyans.