Hotel Online Special Report Design: Refinishing, Reupholstering Gets Results Cost Benefit Analysis By Barbara A. Worcester H&MM Senior Editor, Nov 1998
Once upon a time . . . in a hotel not long ago, new casegoods arrived. There were lovely armoires with high lacquer finishes, upholstered chairs in luxurious fabrics and shiny brass mirrors that reflected the beauty of the guestroom. The hotel thought for certain that these casegoods made it the loveliest property in the land, until . . . the guests came, and left their marks on the new furniture, forever. Just like Snow White was brought back to life in the 1937 Walt Disney movie after a kiss from Prince Charming, a hotel can bring its furniture back to life through refinishing and reupholstering.
“Casegoods are an expensive asset, representing possibly the largest individual asset in hotel real estate-aside from the real estate itself,” said Mario Insenga, president of Alpharetta, Ga.-based The Refinishing Touch. “Casegoods and upholstered seating represent approximately 40 percent to 50 percent of the room renovation budget. If a hotel can reduce that budget expense to 10 percent, it can put more money back into the facility or dramatically boost its bottom line.”
Insenga said that due to the natural aging effect on furniture, the life cycle of casegoods is roughly seven to 10 years. However, he said casegoods in business-class hotels will tend to hold up longer than properties that attract leisure travelers due to the length and nature of the guest stay.
For example, he said coastal hotels, and those that feature swimming pools and water sports, tend to have more furniture damage due to high humidity climates and wet bathing suits being draped over chairs or thrown on dressers.
“Good wood never wears out,” Insenga said. “We’ve found that newer products on the market are not as well constructed as some of the existing items in hotels. Tired, worn and out-of-style furniture can be made to look great once again [through refinishing] at a budget savings of 80 percent, compared to purchasing the same items brand new.”
In addition to the cost savings, Insenga said there are two other benefits from refinishing casegoods. First, all casegood refinishing and reupholstering from The Refinishing Touch and a few others, is done on site. This, he said, eliminates the need for the hotel to ship casegoods to an off-site refinishing company, and it eliminates the need to take guestrooms out of inventory for an extended period of time.
Door-to-door service
“All our work is done safely-using waterborne materials that are odorless, nontoxic and nonflamable-and efficiently on location,” Insenga said. “Rooms restored in the morning, typically 10 to 14 a day, can be occupied that same evening. “
The second reason refinishing is so attractive, Insenga said, is that it helps save the rainforest. Millions of trees are cut to make new furniture, he said. “We believe we’re doing something beyond the dollars and cents of the business by reducing the number of trees that are used for furnishings that are ultimately dumped into landfills,” he said. “In one minute, 80 acres of rainforest is destroyed.”
There are other options, however, to throwing out worn or out-of-style hotel furniture. The Algonquin Hotel in New York recently donated some of its worn furniture to Furnish a Future, a not-for-profit organization that helps find and furnish homes for the homeless.
Bob Meyer, director of architecture and design for the Camberley Hotel Co., the Atlanta-based management company that operates the Algonquin Hotel, said the property recently refinished almost 75 percent of its casegoods as part of the hotel’s $5.5 million renovation.
“We were driven by our budget,” Meyer said. “When you start out on a project like this, you want everything to be the best. But somehow, the budget has to match the reality of the concept. Our result was one of ‘value engineering.'” Meyer said the cost to refinish the casegoods was one-third of what it would have cost the hotel to purchase the items new. He said $53,000 was spent to refinish casegoods in 165 guestrooms and suites; and approximately $28,000 was spent on reupholstery. The woodworking in the lobby cost approximately $145,000.
“We refinished anything that was worth keeping,” Meyer said. “A lot of the furniture was in bad shape, and repair couldn’t stand the test of time, so it was tossed.”
Encore Renewal Systems of Atlanta did the refinishing job at the Algonquin. Tom Chance, national sales manager for Encore, said that for those hotels that bought better furniture, refinishing and reupholstering has becoming a popular option, and is hitting all hotel segments, from luxury properties such as Ritz- Carlton and Four Seasons to economy hotels such as Comfort Inns. Chance warned, however, that there are newer products on the market that are of inferior quality and will not tolerate refinishing.
Anything goes
There is no apparent trend in selecting finishes for furnishings today. Industry experts say that hotels are taking traditional mahogany pieces and are applying a white-wash or crackled finish, while hotels with more neutral-style furniture are going more traditional.
“Owners and operators of hotels today are looking for new ways to define their product,” said Brad Elias, president of Elias Design, New York. “One chain that may have been contemporary is now moving toward traditional and vice versa. Anything goes. Adding new finishes really helps to change the entire design of the room.”
Elias said some of the newer hotel owners and operators have abandoned standards and are experimenting with fabrics. For example, he said, he has seen newer hotels add suedes to chairs and fabrics to headboards. He said, however, that these products don’t meet durability standards and will be difficult to maintain.
“There needs to be newer, fresher standards that include durability with design,” Elias said.
One way hotels can maintain control over the refinishing and reupholstering process and make sure that work is being done to specifications is to have a shop in house. The Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, Colo., for example, has had its own refinishing and reupholstery shop on premises for more than 20 years.
“We are fortunate enough to have our own maintenance building at the Broadmoor that had enough space to set-up two separate shops under one roof,” said Mike Rolla, engineering department manager. “Doing the work ourselves has eliminated disputes between second and third parties. We control the quality, and we can blame only ourselves if the job isn’t done right.”
Rolla said the cost to have a five-foot sofa reupholstered by an outside contractor is equal to the salary for one week for a Broadmoor refinisher or upholsterer. However, he said it has been difficult to keep staff at the hotel because it’s hard to compete with private sector wages.
“We are aggressively looking for qualified people to staff our refinishing and reupholstering shop,” he said. “It’s important to the Broadmoor to have staff in-house that can do anything from routine touch-ups and prepare rooms for quality inspections to complete woodworking projects and reupholster jobs. The cost savings and quality control is substantial.”
Cost Benefit Analysis The following items show the comparison between refinishing existing casegoods or purchasing them new Quantity Item New Refinished Savings 1 Amoire $700 $55.50 $644.50 1 Mirror $127 $14.00 $113.00 1 King Headboard $197 $17.00 $180.00 2 Nightstands $290 (both) $35.00 $255.00 1 Activity Table $133 $18.00 $115.00 2 Side Chairs $254 (both) $36.50 $217.50 This analysis does not consider the inherent costs of financing capital purchases, depreciation devaluations or other tax issues. Source: The Refinishing Touch Cost Benefit Analysis The following items show the comparison between refinishing existing casegoods or purchasing them new Quantity Item New Refinished Savings 1 Amoire $700 $55.50 $644.50 1 Mirror $127 $14.00 $113.00 1 King Headboard $197 $17.00 $180.00 2 Nightstands $290 (both) $35.00 $255.00 1 Activity Table $133 $18.00 $115.00 2 Side Chairs $254 (both) $36.50 $217.50 Contact: Hotel & Motel Management website: http://www.hmmonline.com Jeff Higley, Managing Editor 440-891-2654 email: [email protected]