Hotel Refurbishment Costs Per Room: A UK Guide

The three tiers, and what each one really costs

Most schemes fall into one of three bands. Knowing which band you are in is worth more than any single figure, because the wrong assumption at feasibility stage is where budgets come unstuck.

These are construction and FF&E costs per key, excluding VAT, professional fees and the revenue you lose while rooms are out. Manchester and the wider North West typically sit a little below central London rates, though specialist trades and long lead FF&E items are priced nationally.

• Soft refresh (carpets, curtains, decoration, loose furniture, bedding, lighting): roughly £4,000 to £9,000 per room
• Mid level refurbishment (as above plus new bathroom, fitted joinery, doors, some M&E alterations): roughly £15,000 to £35,000 per room
• Full strip out and reposition (back to structure, new services, new layouts, upgraded fire and acoustic performance): roughly £40,000 to £90,000 per room, higher for listed or heavily serviced buildings

What pushes the figure up or down

Bathrooms are usually the single biggest swing factor. Replacing a tiled bathroom in an existing building means drainage alterations, waterproofing and tanking, and often work in the room below. On larger new build or heavy conversion schemes, prefabricated bathroom pods can be quicker and more consistent, but they need the structure and riser positions to suit.

Building age and status matter enormously. Manchester has a lot of converted mill, warehouse and Victorian commercial stock, particularly around the Northern Quarter, Ancoats and Castlefield. Listed status or a conservation area brings consent timescales, sympathetic detailing and specialist windows. Buildings from the 1960s to the 1980s frequently need asbestos survey and removal before anything else starts.

• Fire strategy work: compartmentation, fire doors, alarms and sprinklers, driven by the Building Safety Act regime for buildings over 18m
• Energy performance: MEES and the direction of travel on EPC ratings often make plant, glazing and insulation upgrades unavoidable rather than optional
• Accessibility: bringing a proportion of rooms up to current standards usually costs more per key than a standard room
• Riser and plant capacity: if the existing services cannot carry new loads, costs rise sharply across the whole building

The costs that sit outside the per room figure

A per key rate covers guest rooms. It does not cover the public areas, and those can account for a quarter to a third of total spend on a full scheme. Reception, bar, restaurant, meeting rooms, back of house, lifts, corridors and the roof are all priced separately.

Then there are the numbers that never appear on a construction quote. Professional fees, typically 8 to 15 per cent depending on complexity. VAT, which is generally recoverable for a VAT registered operator but still affects cashflow. Contingency, sensibly 10 per cent on a straightforward refresh and 15 to 20 per cent on anything involving opening up an old building. And lost room revenue, which on a trading hotel is often the largest hidden cost of all.

Phasing while you keep trading

Very few operators can close entirely. The usual approach is floor by floor or wing by wing, with separated access routes, temporary fire strategy and noise restricted to agreed hours. This protects revenue but adds cost, because setting up and striking a working area repeatedly is less efficient than doing the whole building at once.

As a rough guide, expect a phased programme to add somewhere in the region of 10 to 20 per cent to the construction cost compared with a full closure. Whether that is worth paying depends on your occupancy, your seasonality and your rate. A city centre Manchester hotel with strong midweek corporate demand and busy event weekends often finds the maths favours phasing. A seasonal property may be better closing over a quiet winter period.

Getting to a number you can rely on

The most useful early step is a condition and services survey plus an asbestos survey. Together they turn the two largest unknowns, hidden building fabric and existing M&E capacity, into priced items rather than risk.

From there, a sample room built out properly, sometimes called a mock up room, is worth the money on any scheme above about twenty keys. It settles the specification, exposes buildability problems and gives you a real cost per key rather than a benchmark borrowed from someone else's building.