It’s all about pre-planning.

So your guest rooms and corridors are getting worn. The guests are complaining on the travel sites. The property has not had a refresh in five or seven years. We had better do a refresh quickly. Not a problem, right? Just hire an interior designer and get some renderings and color presentations. Install a model room, price it out, get management approval and get going.

Not so fast. As CEO of Purchasing Management International for almost 25 years, I know we have provided over $3 billion in furniture, fixtures, equipment and construction supplies procurement to hotels, casinos and tribal casino properties. I have seen so many times how the lack of preparation and forward planning can turn a simple renovation into a nightmare of lost room revenue and serious cost overruns.

In our experience, during the pre-planning for your renovation, four steps will ensure a smooth process, eliminate mistakes and save you money.

1. Hire A Professional, Experienced Project Manager
Make sure to hire an owner’s rep that has years of experience working either for a large gaming/hotel company construction/design department, or third-party manager that has several casino hotel renovations under its belt.

2. Physical Room Inventory and Measurements
Just because your front desk says you have 100 king rooms and 90 double queen rooms and 50 suites does not mean they are all the same. In most hotels, a king room can be a different width and length as you go up and down the building. There are larger or smaller chases, structural columns and equipment that can take up space in the rooms. Corner rooms can have additional windows and other structural differences.

If the renovation team does not understand each room type, mistakes can be made by ordering too much furniture or too little. Today, designers are specifying more and more wall-to-wall headboards and desk units. If you do not have the right measurements for each room type, you can end up with units that do not fit into each room. It is not one size fits all.

The best way to avoid this is to measure and photographically inventory each room and create a room matrix and a furniture matrix based on the designer’s proposed furniture layout in each room type. We have done these room measurements and inventories on many properties. It only takes a few days in an operating hotel, but it is worth thousands of lost dollars later on by avoiding mistakes.

3. Publish A Realistic Timeline
We see all too often the manager of the hotel decree that the renovation will start in July because that is the slow season. While the slow season is the best time to take rooms out of order, that schedule is rarely in sync with the reality of the time it takes to design, procure, make furniture and get it delivered to the site ready for installation.

The best way to get a grip on reality is to create a written timeline based on input from all the team players. Here are some rules of thumb.

The designer needs time to create each room for conceptual approval and then time to create specifications. Let’s say two to three months.

Then a model room… Add another three to four months.

After model approval, the designer will revise the specifications based on the model review. This will take at least one month.

Purchasing agents and contractors need to price and procure all goods. Give it one to two months.

Upon issuance of the purchase order to the vendors, they need two to four weeks to complete shop drawings, finish samples, cuttings for approval, carpet strike-offs or prototypes. The longest lead times are lighting (18 weeks), fabrics and upholstered furniture (eight to 10 weeks), then six to eight weeks for seating—it equals 18 weeks from all design approvals.

Shipping will take two weeks.

From model room approval and documentation, estimate 20 to 25 weeks to start deliveries.

It is important to understand that there are rarely any shortcuts to this process, especially for custom goods. The only way to make it go faster is to pay more money for overtime and air freight.

4. Do Not Start the Renovation Until You Have FF&E in the Warehouse
Now many people will say we can start with carpet and wall covering in hand and the FF&E will show up later. Believe me, there are many ways FF&E does not show up on time. Maybe the designer is not approving finishes fast enough, or holidays can get in the way, or even lack of timely funding of the vendors will create delays.

There is nothing worse than a renovation where the hotel cannot turn back rooms on time or is turning back guest rooms that are not complete. Either way, you are losing a lot of money.

Taking steps early in the process to hire a good manager, understand the details of your rooms, be realistic as to the amount of time it takes to design, fabricate and ship furniture, and to have all your FF&E and construction materials on hand before you start taking rooms out of order, will ensure a smooth process and save you money.