Closing a hotel for six months to refurbish it is rarely an option. Debt still needs servicing, staff still need paying and bookings lost to competitors do not always come back. The good news is that most refurbishments in Manchester and across the North West are carried out with the hotel open, provided the work is planned in phases and the contractor understands that guests come first.
A live refurbishment is realistic for bedrooms, corridors, bathrooms, restaurants, bars and reception areas. These can be isolated in blocks and worked on while the rest of the building trades normally. A 120 bedroom hotel might release 20 to 30 rooms at a time, with each block taking four to eight weeks depending on whether you are replacing bathrooms or simply redecorating and refitting furniture.
Where it gets harder is work to the building's core services. Replacing a central boiler plant, rewiring risers, upgrading the fire alarm system or stripping back a single lift in a hotel with only one lift will all affect every guest. These jobs are still possible while open, but they need temporary systems, night working or short partial closures written into the programme from the outset rather than discovered halfway through.
The usual approach is to split the hotel into zones, typically by floor or wing, and run the work as a rolling sequence. Rooms come out of sale, are stripped, refitted and handed back before the next block starts. Your revenue manager needs to be involved early so that blocked rooms line up with the quieter weeks. In Manchester that often means avoiding the conference season, major Etihad and Old Trafford fixtures, and the Christmas market period from mid November.
Deliveries, waste removal and noisy works are timed around guests. Most contractors will agree to a noise window of roughly 9am to 5pm, with drilling and demolition restricted further, often 10am to 4pm, so that late checkouts and early arrivals are not disturbed. Hoardings, temporary partitions and separate access routes keep dust and trades away from public areas.
Phased working typically adds 10 to 20 percent to the build cost compared with a full closure, because the work is less efficient, more labour goes into protection and cleaning, and the programme is longer. Against that, a mid market hotel in central Manchester losing 60 to 80 percent of its room revenue for several months usually finds the phased premium is far cheaper than closing.
As a rough guide, a soft refurbishment of bedrooms in the North West, meaning new soft furnishings, decoration, flooring and lighting, tends to fall between £8,000 and £15,000 per room. A full strip out with new bathrooms, joinery and services is more often £25,000 to £45,000 per room, and higher for upscale properties. Public areas are priced per square metre and vary enormously with the specification. These are ranges, not quotes, and depend heavily on the age of the building and what is found once ceilings and walls are opened up.
Older Manchester and Salford hotels, especially converted mills, warehouses and Victorian buildings, often contain asbestos. A refurbishment and demolition survey is a legal requirement before any intrusive work, and if asbestos is found in a live building the removal has to be carefully sequenced and enclosed. This is one of the most common causes of a phase overrunning.
Fire safety is the other. Temporary hoardings, blocked corridors and disabled detectors all change the fire strategy. Your fire risk assessment needs updating for each phase, and the contractor should be producing a fire plan showing escape routes and temporary alarm cover. The local fire and rescue service can and does inspect hotels under refurbishment.
Finally, be honest with guests. Booking platforms now show reviews within days, and a guest who was told nothing about building work will complain far louder than one who was warned and offered a room away from the site.
Internal refurbishment usually does not need planning permission, but external changes, extensions, signage or works to a listed building do. Building Regulations approval is still needed for structural, fire safety, electrical and drainage work regardless of whether the hotel is open.
Most hotels release between 15 and 25 percent of their inventory per phase. Fewer rooms means a longer overall programme; more rooms means faster completion but a bigger hit to revenue and more disruption on a single floor.
Overnight working is possible for corridors and public areas but rarely for bedroom floors, because sound travels through the structure to sleeping guests. It also costs more in labour and may breach planning or licensing conditions, so check before relying on it.
Tell us about your site or scheme and we will come back with a route to delivery, whatever stage you are at.