About

Cocoplum Design Studio is an evidence-based hospitality interior design studio specialising in hotels, resorts, neuroarchitecture, biophilic design, FF&E and refurbishment projects across Australia and the globe. Based in Sydney, Australia, our founder Ozge Fettahlioglu leads our specialist team.



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Alba Hotel

What Do You Keep and What Do You Replace in a Hotel Refurbishment?

Replace what will reach the end of its life before the next planned entry into the room, what fails a compliance check and what guests notice; keep what still has life and will not force a second entry. The cost of re-entry decides it. Working ranges: soft goods 5 to 7 years, casegoods 7 to 10, bathrooms about 10, services 20 to 25, beside the ATO’s published effective lives.

Alba Hotel

How Do You Renovate a Hotel Without Closing It?

Rooms come out of inventory in blocks, a floor or a wing at a time; the work zone is sealed for noise, dust, fire safety and access; noisy work keeps fixed hours. What decides whether it works is how much of the FF&E is finished before the first floor closes, and how the fire and acoustic systems are managed while walls are open.

How Long Does a Hotel Refurbishment Take?

A guest room refurbishment at an operating hotel runs at the rate rooms can be handed back, not at the rate trades can work. The public Australian benchmark is 323 rooms in 39 weeks at RACV Royal Pines. The stages, what governs each one, and why FF&E procurement sets the date.

Hotel Alba Caracas: renovated guest room. Turnkey interior design, fit-out and FF&E for 700 rooms, completed 2022.

How Much Does It Cost to Refurbish a Hotel Room in Australia?

There is no single cost per room, because every published figure answers a different question. What an owner can use is the structure of the cost. From a 103-key interior package we priced in March 2026: guest rooms were 62 per cent of the FF&E, public areas 32 per cent, and within the room fixed joinery was half the money. Here is how the number is built, what it leaves out, and how to budget from it.

Jumeirah Zabeel Saray, Palm Jumeirah, Dubai: guest bathroom. FF&E designed and produced by Cocoplum Design Studio, completed 2010.

How Do You Keep Design Control When One Team Designs and Manufactures the FF&E?

A single design-and-manufacture contract can keep an independent check on quality and price. Here is how Cocoplum builds it in: open-book pricing against comparison quotes, a prototype room signed off by your own quantity surveyor, standards evidence per item, warranties and spare parts, and five sign-off gates.

A Cocoplum Design Studio hospitality project, The OQ Hotel.

What’s a Good Design Style for High End Hospitality?

There’s no single style that defines luxury hospitality, quiet luxury, biophilic design, Art Deco and Japandi can all work, or all fail. Here’s what actually makes a five-star space feel luxurious, memorable and true to place.

Australian Hotel Developers Are Not Making a Quality Decision When They Cut FF&E. They Are Making a Modelling Decision. And the Model Is Wrong.

The refurbishment line in most Australian hotel pro formas is sized to make the deal work, not to reflect what the asset will actually need. That is not a character failure. It is a data problem. And the Q1 2026 APAC FFE Market Demand Index makes it very hard to ignore.