A hotel refurbished floor by floor is a rolling programme: the same sequence repeats on every level, the guest floors above and below stay in use, and the corridor is the working route as well as the guest route. Protection is bought once and has to work on every floor, which changes what is worth specifying.
Reuse is the whole economics
A hotel refurbishment might run twelve floors over a year. Protection that is bought per floor and skipped costs twelve times; protection that is lifted, cleaned and re-laid costs once plus labour. That is the argument for a washable reusable panel and it is overwhelming on this kind of programme – the panel pays back on the second floor and everything after that is saving.
Quiet matters in a way it does not elsewhere
Guests are asleep directly above and below. A hard panel on a hard corridor floor drums under a trolley and transmits through the structure. A cover with a fibrous face down is noticeably quieter, and it is the specification detail that generates the fewest complaints on a hotel job. Worth asking for explicitly, because it is not what a general protection quote will offer.
The corridor is a guest route
Guests walk the corridor with luggage, at night, sometimes having had a drink. Wheeled suitcases are hard and narrow and they destroy protection at joints, and they do it in exactly the area that has to look acceptable. A dedicated hard-wearing panel run along the luggage line, with the rest of the corridor in a lighter specification, is the pattern that works.
Moving between floors
Protection has to get from floor four to floor five without a lot of handling, which argues for a panel size one person can carry through a fire door and for a storage spot on each floor. It also argues against anything cut to fit one corridor exactly – a reusable stock size is more useful across a rolling programme than a bespoke one.
Where disposable is still right
The guest bathrooms and the back-of-house areas that are being stripped out completely do not need reusable protection, and using it there is a waste of the asset. Split the order: reusable panels for the guest corridors and landings, disposable sheet for the areas being gutted.
Guest bedrooms versus corridors
Corridors and landings carry the traffic and get the reusable panels. Bedrooms that are being stripped and re-fitted do not need them – their floors are usually being replaced – and using reusable stock there wastes the asset and slows the strip-out. Splitting the order by area, rather than buying one product for the whole floor plate, is what makes the reuse economics work.
Guest noise and the lifting schedule
Lifting and re-laying panels makes noise, and in a hotel it makes noise above and below occupied rooms. Doing it within agreed hours, and doing the whole floor in one pass rather than in pieces across a day, keeps complaints down. It is a programme constraint worth agreeing with the hotel manager at the start rather than reacting to complaints.
Spare panels
Order ten per cent more panels than one floor needs. Some will be damaged, some will be cut for awkward landings, and having spares means the next floor starts on time rather than waiting for a delivery. On a rolling programme the spares pay for themselves on the second floor.
What we can do
We supply washable honeycomb panels sized for one-person handling, in a stock size that suits a rolling floor-by-floor programme. Tell us how many floors and how long each takes, and we will size the set and give an honest view of how many panels come back each time. Recovery experience is in recovery rates on reusable floor protection.