Hotel renovation in Batumi: room by room, without closing

Renovation in blocks, without closing the hotel

A hotel renovation in Batumi can rarely be carried out behind closed doors: even in winter some rooms are occupied, and spring bookings come in early. We divide the room stock into blocks and renovate them one at a time.

Block boundaries are set by the risers. Rooms stacked above one another on a shared water and drainage riser are best done together: the riser is replaced once and pressure-tested for all the floors at the same time. We take the block off sale for the whole duration of the work, plus a few days for sign-off and cleaning, and the other rooms stay in the booking calendar.

The renovation shouldn't disturb guests. We agree noisy work with the hotel manager within the legal hours, 08:00 to 23:00, and schedule it for the middle of the day, when most guests are at the beach or in town. The crew uses the service stairs, or the lift at set hours, waste is taken out in bags to a schedule, and the corridor by the block is closed off with a dust-proof screen.

We work the same way with guest houses, hostels and small hotels. If you have a single apartment for short-term rental rather than a hotel, a closer fit is our renovation of apartments for short-term rental.

A model room and one specification for the whole hotel

First we renovate one room completely, with furniture and lighting. You check it in person or by video: whether the bed is well placed, whether there are enough sockets, how the light falls on the mirror, whether the wardrobe door creaks. Your comments go into the specification, and only then do we start on the blocks.

A mistake in the model room costs one redo. The same mistake spotted in the twentieth room costs twenty. That is why the specification records everything that repeats: the product codes of tiles and sanitary ware, the heights of sockets and switches, the tile layouts, and the models of light fittings, air conditioners and locks. If the hotel has several room types, we make one model room of each type.

Materials for the whole room stock are bought in one batch, with a reserve: tiles and porcelain are ordered with a surplus from the same batch, and a couple of doors and taps go into storage. A year later a cracked tile in one bathroom can be replaced without a shade mismatch, and the product codes for reordering will be in the handover file.

Room bathrooms

The bathroom accounts for most of a room's estimate and most of the complaints. A leak from a room on the third floor takes both that room and the one below it off sale. So we waterproof the whole floor with an upstand on the walls, and the shower area to the full splash height, and test it with water before tiling. How this kind of renovation works step by step is described on our page about turnkey bathroom renovation.

In a hotel, guests shower at almost the same time in the morning, and there has to be enough hot water for the last guest on the floor. We check the capacity of the water heaters or the output of the boiler against the number of rooms, not the floor area. Every bathroom gets an extract fan with a non-return damper, so that smells from the next room don't come in through the shared shaft.

We fit isolation valves on the water supply to each room. If there is a leak, the technician shuts off one room, not the riser for every floor, and the neighbouring rooms stay on sale. We leave access to traps, concealed cisterns and valves that doesn't require breaking tiles. The bathroom is cleaned every day, so we keep the grout joints narrow and the junction between the shower and the floor free of gaps where dirt collects.

Soundproofing between rooms

Noise between rooms in a working hotel is harder to fix than painting the walls, so we deal with it in the same block in which we replace the bathrooms. Sound travels three ways: through the wall, through the door from the corridor and along the services. Closing off just one of them isn't enough: the guest will still hear the neighbour through the other two.

We upgrade a lightweight partition between rooms with a second layer of plasterboard on a separate frame with mineral wool, taken up to the slab. Sockets and switches that sit back to back in neighbouring rooms are moved apart, and gaps around pipes and cables passing through the wall are sealed.

The room's entrance door gets a seal all round and a drop-down seal that closes the gap at the floor. Risers in the bathroom boxing are wrapped in acoustic material, so that the noise of water from above doesn't wake the guest. We choose quiet indoor air conditioning units and route the condensate drain so that it doesn't gurgle by the headboard.

Finishes that last the season

Dozens of different guests stay in a room over a season, and each of them leaves marks. Suitcases knock the corners and the bottom of the walls, chair backs scratch the wall by the desk, wet towels lie on the floor. We choose finishes for this kind of wear: class 33 laminate or SPC vinyl on the floor, washable paint on the walls, wall panels behind the headboard and by the luggage rack, and guards on the corners and the bottom of the doors.

Carpet deadens footsteps well, but in a humid climate without constant air conditioning it picks up a smell that cleaning can no longer remove. So in Batumi we usually lay a hard floor on an underlay that absorbs footsteps, and leave a removable rug by the bed that goes to the laundry with the linen.

Corridors take a beating from cleaning and luggage trolleys. The floor here is tougher than in the rooms, and the walls are protected up to trolley height with a crash rail or panels. Corridors are renovated last, when bags of waste from the rooms are no longer being carried along them.

Wiring, equipment and fire safety in the room

Guests meet the wiring on their very first evening: USB sockets on both sides of the bed, a reading light that doesn't wake the person sharing the room, a switch for the main light both by the door and by the headboard. A key card switch at the entrance turns off the lights and air conditioning when the guest goes out. We leave a circuit that works without the card for the fridge and one charging socket.

Every room gets an air conditioner, the outdoor units are placed according to the building's rules, and the condensate goes into the drains, not onto the balcony of the room below. Power and cabling for the electronic lock, the TV and a Wi-Fi access point in the corridor are put in at the rough stage. If the rooms are to be let through our short-term rental management, we agree the list of equipment with the rental manager.

Fire alarm detectors, exit signs and emergency lighting in the corridors are not removed during the renovation unless replacements are put in. In Georgia, Government Resolution No. 370 of 23 July 2015 approved the technical regulation “On Fire Safety Rules and Conditions”. We clarify which of these fire safety regulations apply to your hotel before the design.

How much a hotel renovation costs in Batumi

Renovating a hotel room with a bathroom costs from 15,600 to 21,600 ₾ per room. The price covers labour and materials: demolition, services, the bathroom, soundproofing, floor, walls, doors and lighting, without furniture. The bathroom takes up a sizeable share of it: on its own, a turnkey renovation of a 4–6 m² bathroom costs from 5,880 to 8,400 ₾.

If the room also needs furnishing, a mid-range furniture and appliances package costs from 360 to 480 ₾ per m² of room, and air conditioner installation from 330 ₾ per unit. Identical rooms cost less than varied ones: the specification and purchasing are shared by all of them, and on the second block the crew works faster than on the first.

We base the estimate on the model room, multiply it by the number of blocks and add the corridors and common areas separately. The final cost is set after a survey of the rooms, once the estimate is agreed. The price of each block is written into the contract and does not rise unless the scope changes. You pay by block: an advance for materials and the first block, then after the sign-off of each one.