Mariano Faz, CEO at AHM: “Hotel Restaurants Have To Compete With City Restaurants”

Source: Opção Turismo

For years, hotel restaurants were designed mainly to serve guests. In today’s hospitality landscape, however, that logic is being questioned. For Mariano Faz, CEO of AHM - Ace Hospitality Management, the sustainability of these spaces increasingly depends on their ability to attract the local public and position their food and beverage offering as a standalone business within the hotel.

With around 25 years of experience in the sector, including nearly 11 years in the Middle East, he explains that hotels and restaurants are managed based on different assumptions, and that this difference continues to create operational challenges: “When you’re thinking about the hotel side, you want the guest to feel calm, satisfied, and comfortable. In food and beverage, you want precisely the opposite: you want people to talk, laugh, and consume more,” he says.

According to the CEO of Ace Hospitality Management, this duality makes it necessary to strike a balance between two audiences with different expectations. Very often, however, hotels tend to overprotect their in-house guests. “Sometimes we protect the guest too much and think nothing can happen in the hotel. But bringing more life into the space can be much more beneficial,” he adds.

Experience Above Location

One of the most common perceptions in the sector — that local customers avoid hotel restaurants — is, in Mariano Faz’s view, a misconception. “When I arrived in Portugal, people often told me that the Portuguese don’t like going to hotel restaurants. But that’s false. People go wherever they have a good experience,” he says.

For him, the deciding factor is not the fact that the restaurant is inside a hotel, but rather the value proposition presented to the customer: “If the experience is good and the price makes sense, people come back. They’re not thinking about whether it’s in a hotel or not,” he adds.

The problem often lies in the perception of exclusivity or high prices that is still associated with these spaces. “People think they walk in through the hotel lobby and they’re going to pay 60 euros for a pasta dish. That’s the mindset that needs to be broken,” he says. Creating clear, approachable concepts with their own identity is therefore essential to attract the local community.

Restaurants With Their Own Identity

For Mariano Faz, one of the most common mistakes in hospitality is treating the restaurant as a direct extension of the hotel brand. On the contrary, he argues that these spaces should have an independent identity: “When you’re creating a restaurant, you have to think of it as its own concept. This is the restaurant, this is the name: it doesn’t matter whether it’s inside the hotel,” he explains.

That autonomy allows it to compete directly with the city’s restaurant scene, something that is especially important when the goal is to attract local customers. “The local customer is much more demanding, because they’re comparing you to many other restaurants. That forces you to raise the level,” he concludes.

Otherwise, the restaurant tends to depend almost exclusively on guest consumption. “If the restaurant lives only off the hotel, you’re going to have customers who come downstairs because they’re tired and say, ‘I’ll just eat here and that’s it.’ That doesn’t create any kind of experience,” he notes.

A Business With Its Own Dynamic

For the CEO of AHM, food and beverage should be viewed as a separate business within the hotel operation, with its own rules and a higher degree of uncertainty: “Hotel goes one way and restaurant goes another. They can be completely clear and independent businesses,” he argues, noting that the main difference lies in demand predictability. While hotels operate with relatively anticipated occupancy levels, the restaurant faces a much more volatile reality. “In a hotel, you wake up in the morning and already know you have 60% occupancy. In a restaurant, you can start the day with zero reservations,” he explains.

That dynamic requires a more active approach in terms of marketing, programming, and connection to the local market.

Communication Tailored to the Local Audience

In AHM’s strategy, creating restaurant concepts always begins with defining the target audience. “When we create a concept, we always start by asking: who is the target customer? Then all communication is designed with that audience in mind,” Mariano Faz explains.

Social media plays a central role here, as does working with influencers or content creators who have a direct connection with the local community. “We usually work more with the local public. It’s very difficult to promote a restaurant to someone in Paris who is going to travel here,” he notes.

Expansion in Portugal

Alongside the development of its food and beverage concepts, Ace Hospitality Management continues to expand its portfolio in Portugal. Among the projects in the pipeline is the opening of a new hotel in Porto, under the Tapestry Collection by Hilton brand, scheduled for 2026. This will be followed by a DoubleTree by Hilton in Lisbon, near the airport, and two hotels in Lagos, under the Curio Collection by Hilton and Hilton Garden Inn flags. The company is also preparing a new project in Funchal, Madeira, also scheduled for 2026.

Asked what advice he would give to hotel directors who want to make their restaurants more relevant to the community, Mariano Faz is clear: what is needed is a structural shift in mindset. “There has to be a complete change in mindset. Hotels and restaurants are two different businesses and cannot be compared,” he says.

For him, understanding that difference is the first step toward turning hotel restaurants into spaces capable of competing with the gastronomic offerings of cities and attracting not only guests, but also the local community.