The construction side of a hotel refurbishment is usually well run. Programmed, costed, supervised, reported. The guest side is usually an afterthought handed to whoever’s on shift.
That imbalance is where the reviews come from.
Trading through works is a communications problem first
Every day you trade through works, you’re asking people who paid full price to accept a compromised experience. Whether they accept it depends almost entirely on whether they knew before they arrived.
The worst version of this is a guest who booked months before the works were approved, arriving to scaffolding nobody warned them about. If your forward bookings haven’t been reviewed since approval, that guest already exists on your system.
Tell them at booking, then again before arrival
Two touchpoints. At the point of booking, so the decision is theirs. Then again five to seven days out, because nobody remembers what they read four months ago.
Be plain about it. “We’re refurbishing floors four to six until October. There is drilling between 9am and 4pm on weekdays. The pool and restaurant are open as normal. Your room is on level two and away from the works.”
That last sentence is the one that does the work. General disclosure creates anxiety. Specific disclosure about their room resolves it.
Compensation before complaint
If somebody’s stay will genuinely be affected, deal with it before they raise it. An upgrade, a credit, something at check in with an acknowledgement attached.
Offered at check in, it reads as care. Offered at check out after a complaint, it reads as damage control, and it costs the same money for a fraction of the goodwill.
Arm the front desk properly
Your staff need to know more than the guests do, and usually they know less. A receptionist who can only apologise is the worst available outcome, because an apology without information confirms that something has gone wrong and nobody’s in control of it.
Give them the actual works schedule. Which floors, which hours, what noise, when it stops. Give them authority to resolve a complaint on the spot up to a set value without ringing a manager.
Someone who can say “yes, level five is loud today, I’m moving you to eight and taking breakfast off the bill” has just saved you a review.
The review is written from the gap
Read enough reviews of properties under refurbishment and a pattern shows up. Almost nobody writes an angry review about noise they were warned about. They write angry reviews about surprise.
The complaint is rarely the disruption. It’s the sense of having been sold something quietly different to what arrived.
Owner and guest are different messages
The owner wants program, cost and revenue impact. The guest wants to know if they’ll be woken up.
Same project, entirely different content, different frequency, different person delivering it. Running one set of messaging for both is how you end up sending guests a construction update, which nobody has ever wanted.
Worth asking
If your property is going into works, has anybody gone back through the forward bookings made before it was approved?
That list is where your worst reviews are currently sitting.
Ben Webb is an Australian project delivery leader, AIPM Project Manager of the Year 2022 and an IPMA World Project Manager of the Year nominee 2023. He writes about project delivery, leadership and the difference between managing a project and actually delivering one.
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