Hospitality Fit-Out

Every guestroom programme starts with one physical room, built exactly as it will be delivered at scale: same joinery detail, same tile batch, same shower, same soft furnishing. The owner or operator walks the room, tests the bed, runs the shower and signs it off, and that signed room becomes the reference every other key is measured against.

It matters because every decision is multiplied. A cheaper mixer or a thinner worktop, repeated across every room, is either a real saving or the same visible defect in every bathroom of the hotel. Fixing the specification and the price against a physical room, rather than a drawing, settles that before batch production starts.

A hotel is built once, in one room, then repeated. Get the mock-up wrong and you repeat the mistake in every room.

Guests forgive a dated wardrobe; they write about a shower tray that floods the floor, a mixer that runs cold, grout that has gone black by August. In a Greek hotel renovation the bathroom carries most of the risk and most of the budget per room, so it is detailed first: waterproofing under every wet zone, falls to a linear drain, walk-in showers in place of tubs where the room allows, and finishes chosen for hard water and daily cleaning.

The FF&E schedule then maps every finish and fitting against every typology, from standard and superior rooms to suites, family and accessible rooms. It is also the procurement document: long-lead items such as imported stone, custom joinery and sanitaryware ranges are ordered against it the moment the mock-up is signed, because the programme is set by lead time, not by labour on site.

Where guestrooms reward repetition, a lobby, restaurant or pool deck rewards the opposite: bespoke stone, feature joinery and statement lighting that a guest will not see anywhere else. We treat public areas as one-off interiors, coordinated with the building's services, fire safety and accessibility, but priced and built as bespoke work rather than a repeated batch.

On the coast, the outdoor half of the public areas is a materials question first. Salt air corrodes ordinary steel fixings within a season, summer sun bleaches fabrics and cheap composites, and wet feet from the pool need a slip-resistant surface. Stainless 316, powder-coated aluminium, porcelain and properly sealed stone are the starting point near the sea.

Guestrooms are a manufacturing problem. Lobbies are a design problem. On the coast, everything outdoors is a corrosion problem.

A restaurant's dining room and its kitchen's service flow are usually procured separately, and the point where the pass meets the dining room is where most hotel F&B goes wrong. We design covers, service flow, extraction and finishes together, so the kitchen is sized for the covers the restaurant is actually built to seat, breakfast peak included.

The kitchen is specified for Greek food-hygiene rules from day one: separated raw and cooked flows, hygienic wall and floor finishes, extraction sized to the cook line, and equipment sourced directly from manufacturers with warranty and service support in Greece. The documentation the operator needs for the health file is prepared alongside the build.

Most Greek resort hotels close for the winter, and that closed window is the whole construction programme. The work that decides whether it is enough happens before it opens: the survey while the hotel still trades, the mock-up and the sign-off, and orders placed early enough that the materials are on site, or on the island, when the crews arrive.

Islands add their own logistics. Deliveries follow ferry schedules and port slots, so materials are packed and labelled by room and shipped complete rather than piecemeal; site storage and crew accommodation are agreed in the survey. City hotels in Athens or Thessaloniki that trade all year are phased floor by floor instead, with noise windows, guest lift access and escape routes planned before work starts.

In a seasonal hotel the closed months are the whole programme. Everything that can be decided before they start, is.