Architecture and interiors judged by wear as much as photography.
CBRE puts the price of turning a vacant office building into hotel rooms at $250 to $650 a square foot, well under ground-up construction in some cases, but CBRE's own hotels team says the same buildings routinely blow past that range.
The guest room bathroom is the costliest area per square meter to build and the most maintenance-prone to operate — which is why walk-in showers, WaterSense fixtures and accessible layouts have become the specification default.
Franchise design standards specify everything from corridor widths to soap dispensers so a guest meets the same product in every city — and the property improvement program is the mechanism that renews the promise, at the owner's expense.
Heritage conversions turn buildings with impossible bones — vaulted halls, protected facades, industrial frames — into properties no developer could build new, in exchange for a design process negotiated with preservation authorities.
Noise is among the most frequent complaints in hotel guest reviews, and it is decided in wall assemblies, door seals and HVAC sizing long before a guest checks in — retrofitting acoustics costs multiples of specifying them.
Guests use the same room for work, reading, getting ready and sleeping — and a single bright ceiling fixture serves none of those tasks well, which is why layered lighting has become the standard guest room specification.