What hotel refurbishment actually involves in Cyprus

Hotel refurbishment in Cyprus is priced per guest room, and the working range is €8,500 to €28,000 a room for a strip-out to a finished mid-market bedroom, with the middle of the market nearer €15,000. That number is only ever a third of the project. A hotel refurbishment is three jobs running in parallel — the repeatable bedroom, the one-off public areas, and the plant and envelope no guest will ever see — and the room rate covers the first of those alone.

Scope in plain terms

The bedroom is a production line. Once the specification is settled, the same sequence repeats for every key: strip out, first fix, plaster and screed, joinery and bathroom, second fix, decoration, loose furniture, snag. The value of a hotel programme is that the twentieth room is faster than the first, which is why room count reduces cost per key and why the mock-up room matters more than any other decision on the job.

Public areas are the opposite. Reception, lobby, corridors, stairs, bar and restaurant are one-offs, priced by area rather than by key, and they carry the detailing, lighting and fire compartmentation that make them slower per square metre than a bedroom. Common areas run €180 to €560 per m² for stairwells, lobby and lighting, with the middle around €310 — and that figure assumes the structure and services behind them are sound.

The third job decides whether the first two survive their design life. Roof coverings, risers, incoming electrical capacity, water storage, pool plant, lifts and the facade all sit outside the room rate. Facade work — render repair, coating and balcony edge detail — runs €55 to €175 per m², around €95 in the middle. Where insulation, glazing and HVAC are packaged into one energy retrofit rather than bought separately, the range is €120 to €380 per m². The sector pages on this site break these out as separate scopes for that reason: they are separately procurable and separately fundable, and folding them into a "refurbishment" line hides the cost.

What is included as standard

A per-room rate quoted by a contractor who works in hospitality will normally include the following, and a quote that does not name them is not comparable:

• Strip-out and disposal of finishes, sanitaryware, joinery and floor coverings, including the route the waste takes out of the building.
• Electrical and data second fix — lighting circuits, sockets, bedside controls, TV and data outlets, and the key card system if it is being replaced.
• Bathroom replacement as a complete unit: tanking, tiling, sanitaryware, brassware, extract and the making good behind it.
• Fixed joinery — wardrobe, desk, headboard wall, minibar housing — which on most Cypriot hotel work is made locally to a drawing rather than bought as a system product.
• Plaster, screed, decoration and floor finish through the room and its lobby.
• Making good and snagging, with a room signed off as complete rather than "substantially complete".

Access equipment, corridor and lift protection, site welfare and supervision usually sit in the preliminaries rather than the room rate. What matters is that all tenders show them in the same place.

What is almost always extra

Loose furniture, mattresses, soft furnishings and window dressing are frequently procured by the owner and just as frequently assumed to be inside the builder's price. They are not. Neither are audiovisual hardware, the property management and locking system, or artwork.

Beyond the fittings, four scopes sit outside a room rate almost without exception. Incoming electrical supply upgrades involve the Electricity Authority of Cyprus and carry a lead time no amount of site labour compresses. Fire alarm upgrades, where the existing system cannot be extended, become a building-wide replacement rather than a room item. Lift refurbishment is a specialist package with its own procurement and statutory inspection. And asbestos-containing materials, a realistic prospect in Cypriot hospitality stock built before 2000, mean a survey and a licensed removal, not a variation to a decorator's price.

Permits are the fifth. Any change to layout, external envelope, structure or use routes through the Department of Town Planning and Housing. Certified drawings are prepared by a professional registered with ETEK, and the application sits with the owner, not the contractor. Combining rooms, adding balconies, converting a storeroom into keys or altering the facade all cross that line. Like-for-like internal replacement generally does not — but that determination belongs to the person signing the drawings, not the person pricing the tiles.

The parts people underestimate

The season is the programme. Ayia Napa and the Famagusta resort strip are predominantly seasonal accommodation, and refurbishment there is concentrated into November to March because the rooms are full for the rest of the year. That is a fixed window, and it is the same window every hotel on that coast wants. Protaras has an additional constraint: a high share of holiday lets with short refurbishment gaps between bookings, which suits floor-by-floor phasing and punishes any programme that needs the whole building. Contractor capacity in those weeks is not a market rate that can be negotiated in October. It is booked in spring.

Phasing versus closing is arithmetic, not preference. Closing buys a clear site, uninterrupted trades, noisy work in daylight and the fastest programme. Phasing keeps revenue but pays for it in remobilisation, protection, separation, restricted hours, noise curfews and the supervision needed to keep guests and site apart. The test is whether trading income through the works exceeds that premium. On a property at low occupancy between November and March anyway, closing usually wins; on a year-round city hotel in Nicosia or Limassol, phasing usually does. That calculation belongs before the decision, not after.

The mock-up room pays for itself. Building one complete room to the intended specification, and living with it before the order for the remaining keys is placed, converts arguments into decisions. Socket positions, light levels, wardrobe depth, the noise the extract makes at two in the morning, whether the bathroom door swing works with a suitcase on the floor — all of it surfaces in the mock-up and none of it surfaces on a drawing. A change made in a mock-up costs one room; the same change after ceilings are closed costs a floor.

Coastal exposure changes the specification. Direct coastal frontage — Kato Paphos is the clearest case — means salt-laden air, and galvanised or marine-grade fixings are standard rather than an upgrade. Balustrades, external light fittings, sea-facing door furniture, condenser units and balcony edge detail all fail early when specified to an inland standard.

Procurement, not labour, sets the finish date. Switchgear, lifts, bespoke joinery, balcony glazing, extract plant and chillers are ordered weeks before anyone on site benefits from them, and lead times stretch around the August shutdown. A programme drawn from demolition forward, with no procurement line on it, is a wish.

Contractor class is checkable in advance. Registration is granted by category and by class, and the class caps the value of works that may lawfully be undertaken. A contractor properly registered for a twelve-room refit is not automatically eligible for a full property.

Contractors documenting completed hospitality projects are listed by district in the sector and coverage sections of this site, alongside the hotel refurbishment pages that separate guest rooms, common areas and facade work into distinct scopes.

Common questions

Is a phased hotel refurbishment more expensive than a full closure?

Per room, almost always yes. Phasing adds remobilisation, protection, restricted working hours and supervision that a closed site does not carry, and it stretches the programme across more weeks of preliminaries. Whether it is more expensive overall depends on the revenue retained during the works. Phasing wins where occupancy through the works is high enough to cover that premium, and loses where it is not — which is why seasonal coastal properties tend to close and city properties tend to phase.

How many rooms does it take before the rate per key drops?

There is no threshold figure worth quoting, because the saving comes from repetition rather than from a volume discount. What drops the rate is a settled specification, a single mock-up, one procurement order for all rooms, and a sequence the trades can repeat without re-learning. A small property with a disciplined specification can beat a large one that changes its mind on floor three.

Does refurbishing guest rooms need a building permit?

Like-for-like internal replacement generally does not. Changing the layout, combining or subdividing rooms, altering the external envelope or changing the use of a space generally does, and the route runs through the Department of Town Planning and Housing with drawings certified by an ETEK-registered professional. The application is the owner's, not the contractor's, and it should be resolved before the winter window opens rather than during it.

What is the single most common cause of a hotel refurbishment overrunning?

An incoming electrical supply that was never assessed. New comfort cooling, a refitted kitchen and higher lighting and charging loads can exceed the existing capacity, and a supply upgrade involves the utility and its own lead time. Discovering that in February, with rooms sold from April, is the classic failure mode.

Should the owner or the contractor buy the loose furniture?

Either, provided it is written down. Owner-supplied furniture saves the contractor's margin and transfers delivery risk, storage cost and damage responsibility to the owner. What causes disputes is neither model — it is a contract that never says which one applies.

Contractors documenting hospitality projects

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