Why refinishing hotel furniture makes ‘PIP’ easy

Hoteliers start your engines. The last few years have been tough for the hospitality industry, but hotels are finally setting off down the road to recovery. There’s good reason for owners to start feeling enthusiastic and optimistic about the opportunities ahead, but they still need to exercise caution. The road to recovery is not an easy one, nor is it straightforward. It’s winding, maddeningly unpredictable, and covered with obstacles and speed humps.

Take Product Improvement Plans (PIPs), for example. Hotels that are owned by a group or franchised are required to spend a significant portion of their budget on renovations, to bring the establishment in line with overall brand expectations. This could include replacing televisions in rooms with more up to date models, or updating worn or out-of-style hotel furniture.

During the darkest days of the recession, many hotels put elements of their PIPs on the backburner. And for the most part, hotel owners were okay with it –money was tight, and there was a general acceptance that certain improvements would have to wait. But suddenly PIPs are looking very important indeed. Brand owners are pushing their hotels hard to meet their plans and quickly get up to spec.

Which, for many establishments, is easier said than done. Things may be getting better, but the money still isn’t flowing like it used to.

But here at The Refinishing Touch we know that hotels can go a long way towards fulfilling their PIPs by making intelligent use of what they’ve already got. In our experience, it’s usually faster, and cheaper to refinish and repurpose existing furniture than order an entirely new set. This is something that The Refinishing Touch specialises in, and it’s something that we find ourselves doing more and more. Similarly, many companies ask us to repurpose furniture that is no longer needed – armoires for example – into new pieces that can help with their PIP.

Hospitality professionals need to start thinking very hard about their PIPs right now, because they represent one of the biggest obstacles on the road to recovery. But by planning ahead, and making use of existing resources such as hotel furniture, hotel owners should be able to steer round it and drive on to success.