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 clearest public Australian benchmark is SHAPE Australia’s refurbishment of 323 rooms and their corridors at RACV Royal Pines Resort on the Gold Coast: 39 weeks on site, delivered in stages while the resort traded, which averages a little over eight rooms a week. Before the first room is stripped, the design, prototype and FF&E manufacturing stages take longer than most owners allow, and that is where a programme is won or lost.

What decides how long a hotel refurbishment takes?

Three clocks run on every refurbishment, and the programme is set by whichever is longest.

The front end. Brief, building survey, hazardous materials survey, concept, design development, documentation, approvals and the prototype room. Nothing can be manufactured until the prototype is signed off, so this clock starts everything else.
Manufacturing and delivery. Shop drawings, production, quality inspection and shipping of the furniture, fixtures and equipment. It starts at prototype approval and sets the earliest date the first floor can be finished.
The site rate. How many rooms the operator can release each week, and how quickly each block of rooms can be stripped, rebuilt and handed back. On an open hotel this is governed by inventory and the trading calendar, not by how many trades the builder can put on the floor.

Owners tend to plan around the third clock because it is the visible one. In our experience the first two decide the date, because a floor that closes before its furniture has been made is a floor earning nothing while it waits.

What are the stages of a hotel refurbishment, and what governs each one?

1. Brief, survey and hazardous materials

The brief fixes the scope: which room types, whether bathrooms are opened, whether services are touched, and how many rooms the operator can release at once. A building survey checks that the structure and services match the drawings, because they often do not. If the building was constructed before 2004 the workplace must hold an asbestos register, and under the model Work Health and Safety Regulations the person with management or control of the workplace must review it before refurbishment work starts and give a copy to the contractor doing the work (Safe Work Australia). Ordering that survey early is the cheapest programme protection there is.

2. Concept and design development

Design time is governed by the number of room types and by how many people have to approve each decision. An owner, an operator’s brand team and a designer approving the same scheme in sequence take three times as long as the same three people approving it in one room. The output that matters for the programme is a frozen room design with a specification for every item, because that is what the prototype is built from.

3. Documentation and approvals

Approvals depend on the state and the scope. In New South Wales the Design and Building Practitioners scheme extended to new class 3 buildings, which include hotels, on 3 July 2023; alteration, repair and renovation work on existing class 3 buildings comes under the scheme from 1 July 2028 (NSW Government, Building Commission NSW). In Queensland any building work valued over $3,300 must be carried out by a QBCC licence holder, and fire protection, plumbing and building design work need a licence at any value (Queensland Building and Construction Commission). Check the current position for your state at the brief, because these dates move.

4. The prototype room

One room is built to the frozen design, in the hotel or in the factory, with the actual joinery, finishes, lighting, curtains, bathroom fittings and loose furniture. The owner, the operator and, on our projects, the client’s quantity surveyor or purchasing agent inspect and sign it off. Every change made here costs a day; the same change made after production starts costs a production run. The prototype is the single most important date on the programme, and it is the gate to the next stage.

5. FF&E manufacturing and delivery

Production starts from the approved prototype and shop drawings. Lead time depends on the package: fixed joinery and bathroom vanities are the longest, upholstered pieces and case goods next, and operating supplies and equipment shortest. On Rixos Premium Bodrum, where Boxareno designed and produced the wooden flooring, architectural woodwork and fixed and loose furniture for a 409-key resort, manufacturing and installation ran inside a three-month window ahead of opening. The same team completed the public-area furniture and guest-room flooring for Jumeirah Zabeel Saray in Dubai in November 2010, ahead of its January 2011 opening. Both were new builds with a fixed opening date, which is the discipline an operating hotel needs too.

6. Site works, floor by floor

Each block of rooms follows the same cycle: protect the corridor and the floors above and below, strip out, treat any hazardous materials, alter services, rebuild bathrooms, apply finishes, install fixed joinery, install loose furniture and soft goods, commission, snag and hand back. Bathrooms are the critical path in a hard refurbishment because waterproofing and tiling cannot be hurried. The SHAPE benchmark of 323 rooms in 39 weeks includes corridors and shows what a staged programme on a trading resort delivers in practice.

7. Handover and defects

Rooms return to inventory in blocks. The defects period is when the choice of manufacturer shows: a supplier who inspected production against the prototype before shipping has little to fix; one who did not spends the first three months of trading in occupied rooms.

How long does one guest room take?

The question owners actually ask has two answers. A soft refurbishment replaces loose furniture, soft goods, lighting and paint without opening walls or bathrooms, and a room can turn round in days once the goods are on site. A hard refurbishment opens the bathroom and often the services, and each room spends weeks in the cycle above. Neither figure sets the programme on its own, because rooms are worked in blocks: the block’s duration and the number of blocks the operator will release in sequence decide the calendar. At RACV Royal Pines the average across the whole project was a little over eight rooms a week, corridors included.

Why does FF&E procurement decide the programme?

Because it is the only stage that cannot be compressed by adding people. A frozen design becomes shop drawings, a prototype, an approved sample, production, inspection and shipping, in that order, and each step waits for the one before it. On a split contract there is also a gap: design is approved, then a tender for the furniture is prepared, issued, priced, compared and awarded, and only then does the manufacturer start its own shop drawings. Under a single design-and-manufacture contract the shop drawings begin during design development and the prototype is built by the team that will make the production run, so the procurement gap disappears. How we keep the owner’s design control inside that single contract is set out in How do you keep design control when one team designs and manufactures the FF&E?.

What most often extends a hotel refurbishment?

Discovery. Asbestos not on the register, failed waterproofing under the existing tiles, and services that do not match the drawings. The asbestos register review is a legal duty; the waterproofing test is not, and it is the most common source of rework.
Changes after the prototype. A finish or a joinery detail changed after production starts stops the line.
Long-lead items ordered late. Stone, sanitary ware, lighting and specialist fabrics should be ordered at prototype approval, not at floor closure.
Inventory. The operator withdraws a floor from the programme for a peak period or a conference and the whole sequence moves.
Approvals. Anything that changes the fire strategy, the acoustic separation or the structure needs its own approval path, and it is slower than an interior fit-out approval.

A contingency of 10 to 15 per cent of the budget is normal practice on an existing building, and more if it predates 1990 and has no hazardous materials survey (see How much does it cost to refurbish a hotel room in Australia?). The programme should carry a contingency of the same kind: a float between the last manufacturing delivery and the first floor closure, so discovery on site does not leave a closed floor waiting for goods.

How do you build a programme you can hold?

Start from the operator’s trading calendar and agree which blocks of rooms are released, in what order, and which periods are untouchable.
Fix the prototype room date and work backwards from it for design, and forwards from it for manufacturing.
Order long-lead items at prototype approval.
Close the first floor only when its furniture, fixtures and equipment are made, inspected and either on site or in transit with a confirmed date.
Run the first block as a rehearsal: measure the cycle, then set the rate for the rest of the programme from what was measured, not from what was hoped.
Hold a float between deliveries and floor closures for discovery.

Cocoplum Design Studio and its manufacturing arm Boxareno work this way on hotel projects across Australia and abroad: the interior design, the prototype room and the manufacturing sit under one contract, so the design freeze, the shop drawings and the production programme are one document, not three. Studio founder Ozge Fettahlioglu is a neuroarchitect, a lecturer at Western Sydney University, a member of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture, a NeuroAU graduate and the author of Designing for Health and Wealth (2026).

Sources

SHAPE Australia. RACV Royal Pines Resort Refurbishment: 323 rooms, 39 weeks, 13,000 square metres, staged delivery in a live hotel, construct only for RACV, designer DBI Design. https://shape.com.au/projects/racv-royal-pines-resort-refurbishment/
Safe Work Australia. Asbestos registers at the workplace: duty to prepare a register for buildings built before 2004, to review it before refurbishment and to give a copy to the contractor. https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/doc/asbestos-registers-workplace
NSW Government, Building Commission NSW. Building classes and roles of professionals under the Design and Building Practitioners scheme: class 3 from 3 July 2023 for new buildings, existing class 3 alteration and renovation work from 1 July 2028. https://www.nsw.gov.au/housing-and-construction/compliance-and-regulation/professionals-working-on-regulated-buildings/building-classes-and-roles
Queensland Building and Construction Commission. Who must hold a QBCC licence: building work valued over $3,300; fire protection, plumbing and building design at any value. https://www.qbcc.qld.gov.au/home-owner-hub/build-renovate/finding-contractor-getting-quotes/who-must-hold-qbcc-licence
Cocoplum Design Studio. Rixos Premium Bodrum and Jumeirah Zabeel Saray case studies: project facts, dates and programme. https://cocoplum.com.au/projects/rixos-premium-bodrum/ and https://cocoplum.com.au/projects/zabeel-saray-dubai/

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to refurbish a hotel room?

A soft refurbishment that replaces loose furniture, soft goods, lighting and paint can turn a room round in days once the goods are on site. A hard refurbishment that opens the bathroom and services keeps each room in the cycle for weeks, with waterproofing and tiling on the critical path. The programme is set by the block of rooms, not the single room, because rooms are released and worked in floors or wings.

How long does a whole hotel refurbishment take?

The clearest public Australian benchmark is SHAPE Australia’s refurbishment of 323 rooms and corridors at RACV Royal Pines Resort: 39 weeks on site, staged while the resort traded. Add the front end before site works start: brief, surveys, design, approvals, the prototype room and manufacturing of the furniture, fixtures and equipment.

What is the longest stage of a hotel refurbishment?

Usually the sequence from design freeze to delivered furniture: shop drawings, prototype room, approval, production, inspection and shipping. Each step waits for the one before it and none can be shortened by adding people. On a split contract a tender period sits between design approval and manufacturing as well.

Why is the prototype room so important to the programme?

Because nothing can be manufactured until it is signed off, and a change made after production starts stops the line. The prototype is the gate between design and manufacturing, and long-lead items such as stone, sanitary ware and lighting should be ordered the day it is approved.

What most often delays a hotel refurbishment?

Discovery on site: asbestos not on the register, failed waterproofing under bathroom tiles, and services that do not match the drawings. After that, design changes made after the prototype, long-lead items ordered late, and the operator withdrawing a floor from the programme for a peak period.

Do we need an asbestos survey before a hotel refurbishment?

If the building was constructed before 2004 the workplace must hold an asbestos register, and under the model Work Health and Safety Regulations the person with management or control of the workplace must review it before refurbishment and give a copy to the contractor. Ordering that review at the brief is the cheapest programme protection available.

Does a single design-and-manufacture contract make a refurbishment faster?

It removes the procurement gap between design approval and manufacturing, because shop drawings start during design development and the team that builds the prototype also builds the production run. It does not remove the prototype or the inspections; those are what keep the owner’s design control, and they are worth the time.

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