Top 4 Frugal Improvements to Your Hotel’s Exterior
A lot of people underestimate the importance of curb appeal on a hotel. This is mostly because they believe that the majority of their visitors book a room after an online research and not after an in-person inspection of premises. Still, even online, they would want to see the exterior of a hotel and this curb appeal can do wonders for your ability to persuade them.
Even if this was not the case, the formation of the first impression starts as soon as your guests first spot the hotel in the distance. A sour taste in their mouth that starts here might carry on throughout the rest of the stay. In other words, you can’t get a second chance to make a good first impression. However, overinvesting in the exterior may not be that wise either, seeing as how, let’s face it, the interior still makes a greater difference. Fortunately, you may not have to choose at all. Here are top four frugal improvements you can make to your hotel’s exterior.
1. Improve your parking lot
The first thing you need to improve is your parking, due to the fact that it’s probably the first part of your hotel’s premises that will attract a large amount of attention. Is the parking lot. Passively, this may greatly influence the first impression that your visitors make of your hotel and improving it doesn’t cost a fortune. All you have to do is do a bit of paint job on the parking lot stripes and handicap signs, add a couple of directional arrows in spots of great visibility and do some work on curbside lines. All of this shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours (depending on the size of your parking lot) and the improvement that it makes is simply stellar. An investment in a parking lot security would also be a welcome sight.
2. Work on your facade
Another thing you need to watch out for are signs of grime, mildew and mold on the side of your building. The problem with this is that regular maintenance cannot help much, which is why hiring a pressure washer may be the only solution to your problem. While you’re at it, you should probably work some more on the façade itself.
The simplest way to go on about this is to look for available scaffolding rental agencies and start by sealing cracks and fractures in the surface. Once again, while not all of these cracks will be visible from far away, remember that those that get left unattended might soon grow in size. Postponing this for later on means that you might need to restart this process (alongside hiring equipment) once again.
3. Cover graffiti
This may sound a bit controversial due to the fact that there are a lot of people who enjoy street art. Nonetheless, their own hotel is usually not the place where they expect, hope or want to see them. Therefore, covering graffiti might be the best course of action in this particular situation. Still, this is not just about painting, seeing as how covering graffiti may require a tad different course of action.
4. Revitalize signage on the premises
Perhaps the simplest way to improve your premises with the smallest possible budget is to invest in new signage on the premises. The entrance, safety exit, parking lot, garage and different areas need to have their signs. The last thing your guests want is to run around the hotel looking for your staff every time they need to find a certain area. What this means is that besides improving the overall customer satisfaction, it also saves your staff’s time, which directly boosts efficiency.
Conclusion
The last thing you need to understand is the fact that these improvements aren’t there merely to boost the resale value of the building but the overall guest experience. This is why you can’t look at them through ROI alone and expect a simple equation to tell you whether it’s worth it or not. For instance, that simple parking lot improvement may seem like something too simple, yet, it sometimes stands to make a massive difference in the way in which your guests feel about your hotel. In other words, it’s an investment worth making, even if, on paper, it may not seem like something that makes a huge difference.