How Do You Renovate a Hotel Without Closing It?

You renovate a hotel without closing it by taking rooms out of inventory in blocks, usually a floor or a wing at a time, sealing the work zone from guests for noise, dust, fire safety and access, and fixing the hours for noisy work. SHAPE Australia refurbished 323 rooms and their corridors at RACV Royal Pines Resort in 39 weeks while the resort traded, in stages and with scheduling built around guest comfort. The method is well understood. What decides whether it works is how much of the furniture, fixtures and equipment is finished before the first floor closes, and how the fire and acoustic systems are managed while walls are open.

Why do most hotels refurbish while they stay open?

Because closure costs more than disruption. A hotel that closes loses every room night for the whole programme; a hotel that phases loses only the rooms in the current block. The arithmetic is the owner’s to do with their own numbers: rooms out of inventory, multiplied by the achieved rate and the occupancy those rooms would have sold at, multiplied by the weeks they are out. Against that sits the cost of staying open: hoarding and protection, out-of-hours labour, a longer programme, and a small but real effect on guest scores while works run. Full closure is usually justified only when the whole building’s services are being replaced, when the structure is touched, or when a rebrand needs a clean relaunch date.

How do you phase the rooms?

Work in blocks the building can isolate. A floor, a wing or the rooms on one service riser. The block should share a lift lobby and a corridor so one set of hoardings and one protected route serves it.
Keep a buffer. Where the structure allows, avoid selling the rooms directly above and below the block during demolition and wet-area works, because impact noise travels through the slab in a way finishes cannot stop.
Sequence for the trading calendar. Start in the softest period, protect the peak dates and the conference calendar, and agree in writing which blocks are released in what order. A floor withdrawn at short notice moves the whole programme.
Keep every room type on sale. Take rooms from each category in proportion so the reservations team is never without a suite or an accessible room.
Build the prototype room on a live floor. It tests the design, but it also tests the process: the protected route, the delivery slot, the noisy-hours rule and the snagging routine, before 300 rooms depend on them.

How do you protect guests from noise and dust?

The acoustic targets show how little tolerance there is. AS/NZS 2107 recommends design sound levels of 30 to 35 dB(A) for hotel and motel sleeping rooms. The National Construction Code, Volume One Part F7, requires walls between sole-occupancy units to achieve Rw + Ctr 50 and walls to corridors Rw 50, but the corridor door need only achieve Rw 30, which is why a corridor under construction is heard inside the rooms along it. The practical rules that follow:

Fixed noisy hours, agreed with the operator and published to guests, with demolition, drilling and coring inside them and quiet trades outside them.
Solid hoardings with sealed doors at the block boundary, not dust sheets; negative-pressure extraction in the work zone so dust moves into the site, not out of it.
A dedicated goods lift or a programmed lift with protected car linings, a separate delivery route and a fixed delivery window.
Door seals and drop seals on the sold rooms nearest the block, which are also one of the highest-return acoustic upgrades the hotel will keep after the works.
A guest communication line at booking, at check-in and in the room, with a rate or room-move policy the front desk can apply without asking.

The same variables decide whether the finished rooms rest their guests, and they are the subject of What Makes Guests Sleep Better in a Hotel Room?.

What happens to fire safety while walls are open?

An occupied hotel with a partly dismantled floor is still an occupied building, and its fire safety systems must keep protecting the people in it. Fire and Rescue NSW publishes a fire safety guideline, Fire safety during construction work, for building owners, builders, certifiers and fire safety practitioners. Its approach is that any isolation or decommissioning of a fire safety system during works is recorded in a fire impairment notice that states what is out of service and what alternative measures are in place, and that isolated systems are reinstated as soon as the works that required the isolation are complete. In Queensland fire protection work must be carried out by a QBCC licence holder at any value. On site this means the fire engineer and the operator’s fire safety adviser are part of the phasing plan, not consulted after it: detection and suppression in the work zone are isolated and covered by an alternative, the egress routes for sold rooms are maintained and kept clear of materials, hot-works permits are issued daily, and the block is returned to full protection before it returns to inventory.

What approvals and licences apply?

They depend on the state and the scope. In New South Wales the Design and Building Practitioners scheme covers new class 3 buildings, which include hotels, from 3 July 2023, and alteration, repair and renovation work on existing class 3 buildings from 1 July 2028 (NSW Government, Building Commission NSW). In Queensland building work valued over $3,300 must be done by a QBCC licence holder (Queensland Building and Construction Commission). For any building constructed before 2004 the workplace must hold an asbestos register, review it before refurbishment and give a copy to the contractor (Safe Work Australia). Anything that alters the fire strategy, the acoustic separation between rooms or the structure needs its own approval path and should be identified at the brief, because it is slower than an interior fit-out approval.

How does FF&E logistics work on a live site?

A trading hotel has no spare floor to store 300 rooms of furniture. Deliveries are made per block, in the agreed window, through the protected route, and installed within days. That is only possible if the furniture, fixtures and equipment were finished and inspected before the block closed. The sequence that makes it work: a frozen design, a prototype room signed off by the owner and the operator, production against the approved sample, a pre-shipment inspection with photographs and measurements, then delivery by block. Under a single design-and-manufacture contract the shop drawings start during design development and the same team builds the prototype and the production run, so there is no procurement gap between design approval and manufacturing. The five commitments that keep the owner’s design control inside that arrangement are in How do you keep design control when one team designs and manufactures the FF&E?, and the whole programme, stage by stage, is in How Long Does a Hotel Refurbishment Take?.

What does staying open add to the cost?

Hoardings, protection, negative-pressure extraction, out-of-hours labour, a slower rate of rooms per week, and repeated set-up and clean-down for each block. These sit inside the mobilisation and preliminaries lines of the builder’s price and the mobilisation line of the FF&E package. A contingency of 10 to 15 per cent is normal practice on an existing building and more if it predates 1990 and has not had a hazardous materials survey, because the most common discovery on an open hotel is failed waterproofing under bathroom tiles, and the second is services that do not match the drawings. How the interior budget divides between guest rooms, public areas, design and mobilisation is set out, with percentages from a 103-key Australian package, in How Much Does It Cost to Refurbish a Hotel Room in Australia?.

What do guests and staff need to know?

Guests accept works they were told about and resent works they discover. Tell them at booking, at check-in and in the room, state the noisy hours, and give the front desk a policy for room moves and rate adjustments it can apply on the spot. Brief housekeeping and engineering on the block boundaries, the protected route and who to call when a hoarding door is left open. Review guest comments weekly during the programme and change the noisy hours if the comments say so. The staged approach only holds if the people who meet the guests can explain it.

Cocoplum Design Studio and its manufacturing arm Boxareno design and produce hotel interiors under one contract, so the prototype, the production programme and the delivery by block are planned with the phasing from the start. 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, staged delivery in a live hotel with strategic scheduling for guest comfort. https://shape.com.au/projects/racv-royal-pines-resort-refurbishment/
Standards Australia and Standards New Zealand. AS/NZS 2107, Acoustics: recommended design sound levels and reverberation times for building interiors.
Australian Building Codes Board. National Construction Code, Volume One, Part F7, Sound transmission and insulation.
Fire and Rescue NSW. Fire safety guideline: Fire safety during construction work. https://www.fire.nsw.gov.au/gallery/files/pdf/guidelines/Fire%20safety%20during%20construction%20work.pdf
NSW Government, Building Commission NSW. Building classes and roles of professionals under the Design and Building Practitioners scheme. 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. https://www.qbcc.qld.gov.au/home-owner-hub/build-renovate/finding-contractor-getting-quotes/who-must-hold-qbcc-licence
Safe Work Australia. Asbestos registers at the workplace. https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/doc/asbestos-registers-workplace

Frequently asked questions

Can a hotel be refurbished while it stays open?

Yes, and most are. Rooms are taken out of inventory in blocks, a floor or a wing at a time, the block is sealed from guests, and noisy work keeps fixed hours. SHAPE Australia refurbished 323 rooms at RACV Royal Pines Resort in 39 weeks while the resort traded.

How many rooms should be taken out of inventory at once?

A block the building can isolate: a floor, a wing or the rooms on one service riser, sharing a lift lobby and a corridor so one set of hoardings and one protected route serves it. Take rooms from each category in proportion so every room type stays on sale.

How do you keep construction noise away from hotel guests?

Fixed noisy hours published to guests, solid hoardings with sealed doors at the block boundary, negative-pressure dust extraction, a dedicated or programmed lift, and a buffer of unsold rooms above and below the block during demolition. AS/NZS 2107 recommends 30 to 35 dB(A) in hotel sleeping rooms, which shows how little tolerance there is.

What happens to fire safety when a hotel floor is under construction?

The building stays occupied, so its fire safety systems must keep protecting the people in it. Fire and Rescue NSW’s guideline on fire safety during construction work uses a fire impairment notice to record any system that is isolated and the alternative measures in place, and isolated systems are reinstated as soon as the works allow. Egress routes for sold rooms are kept clear throughout.

Does the NSW Design and Building Practitioners Act apply to a hotel refurbishment?

The scheme covers new class 3 buildings, which include hotels, from 3 July 2023. Alteration, repair and renovation work on existing class 3 buildings comes under it from 1 July 2028, according to Building Commission NSW. Check the current position at the brief, because these dates move.

Where is the furniture stored on a hotel that stays open?

It is not. Deliveries are made per block, in an agreed window, through the protected route, and installed within days. That is only possible if the furniture, fixtures and equipment were finished and inspected before the block closed, which is why the prototype and production programme are planned with the phasing.

How much does staying open add to the cost?

Hoardings, protection, dust extraction, out-of-hours labour, a slower rate of rooms per week and repeated set-up for each block, carried in the builder’s preliminaries and the mobilisation line of the furniture package. Owners weigh this against the room nights a full closure would lose for the whole programme.

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