Hotel refurbishment is costed per key rather than per square metre, because the room is the repeating unit that drives both the budget and the revenue. In New Zealand, a soft refurbishment runs approximately $5,000 to $10,000 per room, a bathroom refurbishment $10,000 to $15,000, and a comprehensive hard refurbishment $25,000 to $50,000 per room.

New Zealand specific per key data is scarce in the public domain. The figures here are drawn from Complete Construction’s internal pricing data, benchmarked against RLB and QV CostBuilder. What determines where a project sits within them is the scope tier chosen and how the work is sequenced against occupancy.

The three scope tiers

Soft refurbishment

Approximately $5,000 to $10,000 per room. Replacement of soft finishes and loose items without touching services or layout. Typically carpet or flooring, curtains and sheers, bedding and case goods, seating, wall coverings or repaint, artwork, and lighting fixtures where they are direct replacements.

A soft refurbishment refreshes the guest perception of the room without structural or services intervention. Rooms come out of service for a matter of days rather than weeks. It is the standard mid cycle intervention and typically happens every five to seven years.

Bathroom refurbishment

Approximately $10,000 to $15,000 per room. Bathrooms date faster than bedrooms and are disproportionately influential in guest reviews. A bathroom refurbishment involves waterproofing, tiling, sanitaryware, tapware, joinery, extraction and often drainage modifications. It requires the room out of service for considerably longer than a soft refurbishment and usually requires building consent.

Hard refurbishment

Approximately $25,000 to $50,000 per room. Full strip out and rebuild of the room including bathroom, joinery, services, and often layout changes. Where a hotel is being repositioned to a higher tier, or rebranded to a different operator’s standard, this is generally what is required.

What drives cost per key up

Brand standards. An international operator’s brand manual prescribes finishes, fixtures, bed specification, bathroom layout and technology. Compliance is not optional and materially affects the number.

Bathroom scope. Any work involving waterproofing, drainage and tiling is slow, consent triggering and expensive relative to its area.

Services. Where mechanical, electrical or plumbing systems are being upgraded rather than reused, cost rises sharply and the room is out of service for longer.

Building age and construction type. Older buildings produce surprises: undocumented services, asbestos, non compliant previous work, and structural constraints on layout change.

Seismic requirements. Where a hotel is subject to seismic strengthening obligations, coordinating that work with a refurbishment is usually more efficient than doing them separately, but it changes the scope and cost profile entirely.

Access and logistics. Getting materials to the twelfth floor of an operating hotel through a single service lift, at night, is slower than it sounds. Logistics is a real cost line in hotel work.

Small room counts. Refurbishment economics improve with volume. A 40 room boutique property cannot amortise design, mobilisation and prototyping across as many keys as a 300 room hotel.

Refurbishing while the hotel keeps trading

Very few hotels can close. The standard approach is a rolling refurbishment, delivered floor by floor or wing by wing while the remainder of the property continues to operate.

The essential elements:

Zone and seal. The active floor is fully isolated with hoarding, with its own access route and ideally a dedicated service lift. Guests are relocated to floors away from the works, with a buffer floor where possible.

Build a prototype room first. A single completed room, signed off by the owner and the operator before the rollout begins, resolves specification, detailing and quality standard questions once rather than forty times. It also establishes the true per room duration, which allows the rest of the programme to be planned accurately.

Prefabricate. Bathroom pods, joinery sets and headboard assemblies manufactured off site dramatically reduce the time each room is out of service. In house manufacture allows production to be scheduled directly against the floor by floor programme, so completed sets arrive as each zone opens up.

Restrict noisy work to defined hours. Typically mid morning to mid afternoon, when occupancy is lowest and guests are out. This is a shorter working day than a normal site, and the programme must reflect it.

Protect the guest experience absolutely. No construction traffic through guest areas, no materials or waste visible, no noise outside agreed hours, and finished hoarding rather than raw. A refurbishment that damages reviews during delivery undermines the return it was meant to generate.

Model the revenue impact properly. Rooms out of service is the largest hidden cost in any hotel refurbishment. The equation is straightforward: rooms out of service, multiplied by days out, multiplied by achievable rate. Accelerating the programme through prefabrication and larger crews often pays for itself in recovered room nights, and that calculation should be run explicitly rather than assumed.

Timing the works

Most New Zealand hotels schedule refurbishment in the shoulder or low season, which for much of the country means the winter months outside major event periods. The trade offs are real: contractor availability is better in the low season, but so is everyone else’s demand for the same window.

The other timing consideration is the capital cycle. With New Zealand construction tender pricing currently competitive and RLB forecasting cost escalation rising from the second half of 2026 toward 3 percent and above by 2029, a refurbishment programme planned for the next few years faces rising costs the longer it is deferred.

Hotel refurbishment frequently requires building consent, particularly where bathrooms, fire systems, egress or specified systems are affected. Additional considerations:

  • Fire compartmentation between rooms and corridors must be maintained and reinstated
  • Any period of fire system isolation requires a documented interim fire safety plan
  • Accessibility requirements apply to a proportion of rooms and to public areas
  • Where the building is earthquake prone, seismic obligations may interact with the refurbishment scope
  • Compliance schedule and building warrant of fitness obligations continue throughout the works

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to refurbish a hotel room? In New Zealand, approximately $5,000 to $10,000 per room for a soft refurbishment, $10,000 to $15,000 for a bathroom refurbishment, and $25,000 to $50,000 per room for a comprehensive hard refurbishment. These are Complete Construction’s internal figures benchmarked against RLB and QV CostBuilder, and vary with brand standard, building age and services scope.

Can a hotel stay open during refurbishment? Yes, and most do. The standard approach is a rolling floor by floor or wing by wing programme with the active zone fully isolated, guests relocated away from the works, dedicated access and service lift arrangements, and noisy work restricted to defined daytime hours when occupancy is lowest.

How long does each room take? A soft refurbishment typically takes a few days per room. A bathroom refurbishment takes considerably longer. A full hard refurbishment can take several weeks per room, though prefabrication of bathroom pods and joinery significantly compresses this. Building a prototype room first is the reliable way to establish the true duration before committing to a programme.

What is a soft refurbishment versus a hard refurbishment? A soft refurbishment replaces finishes and loose items such as carpet, curtains, bedding, case goods and lighting without altering services or layout. A hard refurbishment involves full strip out and rebuild including bathrooms, services and often layout changes, and is typically required for a repositioning or rebrand.

How often should a hotel refurbish? Soft refurbishment typically occurs on a five to seven year cycle, with a hard refurbishment or repositioning on a longer cycle of roughly fifteen to twenty years. Brand operators often mandate refurbishment cycles as a condition of the management or franchise agreement.

Sources

  • Complete Construction internal pricing data, reviewed by Shaun Francois, Estimator
  • RLB and QV CostBuilder, benchmarking
  • Rider Levett Bucknall, New Zealand Trends in Property and Construction Forecast, Report 114
  • Building Act 2004 and compliance schedule requirements

This article is general information. Costs are indicative and vary significantly by property, brand standard and scope.