Can You Order Takeout and Have it Delivered to Your Room?

Coming in after a long drive and exhausted, maybe even a bit jet-lagged or just miserable, you want something hot and ready to eat. Let’s say you’ve crashed on the bed–been there–and want someone to put a slice of pizza straight into your mouth.

I was there, too, and I wondered, is it possible to get a pizza delivered right to my room in a hotel? Or other foods, like GrubHub or from the corner Chinese restaurant? Here’s what I have found out about the age-old question of can you order takeout and have it delivered to your room?

Hotels Banning Outside Food

Some hotels, especially in large cities like Las Vegas with many resorts and all-inclusive properties, do not allow outside food at all. Food bans from takeout and restaurants include the Virgin Las Vegas resort and Encore at Wynn Las Vegas. The Cosmopolitan has this rule as well, and is also located in Vegas.

According to the Cosmopolitan Terms of Service, “No outside food or drink is permitted in guest rooms.”

At such hotels, you cannot bring outside food and beverages or coolers with you. This includes at casinos in the US, as well. These hotels and resorts depend on you needing to be hungry, since they operate restaurants and bars as profitable parts of their business.

But this rule is not the norm. In hotels with kitchenettes and kitchens, for example, the goal is to provide a place to cook your own meals in your rooms. Therefore, you can have food in those rooms and are even encouraged to cook with a stove or oven, or microwave at the very least. I personally wouldn’t stay in a hotel room without a fridge or microwave.

What is the point, and there are bound to be other accommodations with those amenities locally and at the same price point. It’s important to have some way to store water bottles and keep items cool, and to reheat leftovers or to reheat microwave meals when traveling.

“Can food be brought into Walt Disney World Resort hotels and Theme Parks?,” as noted in the Walt Disney World Dining Meal Plans FAQs. Their answer is,” Guests are allowed to bring food items-such as snacks or foods that do not require heating-into any Walt Disney World Resort hotel.

If you have food items that need to be refrigerated, please ask the front desk at your hotel to have a refrigerator placed in your room. Refrigerator may require an additional charge.”

If you are staying in a hotel, find out if they allow food from outside. If they don’t, you can’t even bring in your own takeout–much less order it delivered. If you can have food from outside, the hotel will most likely allow it for delivery.

Getting Takeout at Hotels Using Apps

Pre-COVID when staying in San Diego Bayside, there was a period when I did not have a way to get anywhere. Our vehicle was not available and I needed something to eat. So I did what we all do and that was to get on the food apps. I found a food app and went to order delivery. The food app, which was GrubHub or DoorDash, said I had to come out and stand by the roadside in order to pick up the food.

Therefore, in my personal experience, they will deliver it to your hotel if you are ordering takeout with a food delivery app. However, they certainly will not deliver it to your room. I was required to stand next to the roadway or driveway, and then asked to meet them in the lobby.

DoorDash as the delivery app, is already partnered with the Wyndham hotels, and there are 4,000 of these nationwide. This partnership means you can use DoorDash for free with their hotel chain. According to Alphr, “So, if you’re already a frequent guest at the hotel franchise, apart from free DoorDash delivery, you’ll also get reward points and other perks.”

They will also deliver your food with DoorDash to your door at your hotel room. You simply need to tell them your room number and consider meeting them in the lobby.

By the way, when I did this, the food never came. The person who was trying to deliver the food could not get to the address, which I admit was at a weird angled corner and at a red light by the ocean. So it was difficult to get a car in the entrance there, but it was not impossible.

I reported it to the app to receive a refund, and called a Lyft to pick us up to go to the local market where we ordered food to take back to the hotel.

The bottom line here with the food delivery apps is you may be able to get them to deliver the food to your hotel room door. Our room was on the ground level and would have been easy enough to reach if a driver was to park right in front of the door. I assume you need to message or text the delivery person and request that they deliver the food to your door when ordering takeout.

Pizza Delivered to a Hotel Room

Pizza delivery is a different ballgame. This is a type of delivery that comes from a pizza restaurant and is not handled by a third party. When you order a pizza delivered to you, it is takeout, so it counts in this category for sure. I would dare say pizza is the most popular type of takeout for any hotel.

If you look at the literature provided in your hotel room, almost every hotel recommends a local pizzeria. To get pizza takeout delivered straight to your hotel room door, ask for room service and order the pizza to be delivered to the hotel in your name. Tell room service you have a pizza on the way; that should do the trick. This would work best in a smaller hotel venue and one without a policy against outside food.

At Universal Orlando’s Cabana Bay Beach Resort, you can get pizza delivered to your room according to their website. As the image shows, they deliver pizza but it has to come from one place–Delizioso Pizza. The hotel serves 10-inch-sized personal pizzas along with the typical food that comes with pizza–salad, brownies, and cheesecake. You can get Delizioso Pizza delivered straight to your room if you are staying at Cabana Bay.

Another pizza delivery restaurant, Hungry Howie’s, states that “Pizza is the perfect meal to order in your hotel room,” and they claim, “You can easily order a pie online or by phone, and yes, they’ll deliver right to your hotel room door.”

There are Hungry Howie’s in states throughout the East especially in Michigan, all the way to California and in Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. Therefore, in more than a dozen states, you should be able to find a local Hungry Howie’s to deliver pizza to your hotel room in the US.