Food Waste Management in Luxury Hotels—Best Practices and Limitations

Hospitality industry and hotels are considered to waste a lot of food. This research aims to focus on food waste management in luxury hotels by investigating three luxury hotels in Budapest (Hungary). The investigation focuses on qualitative methods, eleven interviews and observations were made from September to December 2018. Results show that in luxury hotels the main challenge is to ensure the correct balance between 5* experience and minimizing food waste. It was found that kitchen, breakfast open-buffet and staff canteen are among the leading causes of food waste, generating even higher food waste compared to conferences, banquets, or á la carte options. While a broad range of practices exist that are believed to minimize the food waste of buffets, most of the luxury hotels are only implementing a small ratio of such practices and are only in the beginning of the planning phase to expand their practices in this regard.