Do you know that a poorly designed hotel room could be quietly adding $2–$3 Cost Per Occupied Room (CPOR) to your hotel expenses?
It may not sound like much at first glance—but multiply that across hundreds of rooms, every day of the year, and the numbers quickly become eye-watering.
The truth is this: design decisions directly impact labour costs. Heavy bedframes, awkwardly placed furniture, and poorly considered layouts might look beautiful to a guest’s eye, but for your housekeeping team they mean lost time, physical strain, and inefficiency. And as labour costs continue to rise year-on-year, those seemingly small design choices will only get more expensive.
Every Minute Costs You
Research and industry data show that the simplest oversights in design can have significant impact on your bottom line: :
- Not installing a linen chute will add $2.05 CPOR to your expenses, as staff must use lifts to transport dirty linen and towels. With HIGA wage rates rising, this cost will only increase annually.
- A poor bed choice—too heavy, not on wheels, or fixed to the bedhead—will add $1.20 CPOR, as it takes longer and requires more effort for room attendants to move and make beds beautifully for guest arrival.
- Employees working in poorly designed hotels are 55% more likely to take sick leave and 11% more likely to suffer injuries. This drives up workers’ compensation premiums, strains housekeeping teams, and impacts room readiness.
Multiply these inefficiencies across a 200-room property, and the impact easily reaches hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. In fact, poor design can cost you upwards of $150,000 a year in labour alone.
Would you design and fit out a commercial kitchen without speaking to a specialist? Probably not. So why would you build a hotel without consulting operational experts?
Bringing Housekeeping Into the Design Stage
This is where the LUXXE Touch makes a difference.
We are often brought in once a hotel is operational, asked to optimise processes and manage costs that are already embedded in the design. But what if we could partner with you earlier—before the room is built or refurbished?
By engaging LUXXE in the design stage, we can:
- Advise on furniture choices and placement that reduce unnecessary lifting and bending.
- Recommend bed systems and fixtures that speed up daily servicing without compromising guest comfort.
- Provide time-and-motion insights based on our decade of operational expertise, ensuring every design choice is measured against its impact on CPOR.
- Build a foundation for labour efficiency, team wellbeing, and long-term profitability.
And this is not unique to hotels. When designing a restaurant, bar, or F&B space, our friends at Liquid & Larder and House Made Hospitality will tell you the same thing: bringing us in once designs are locked is too late. Whether it is a kitchen plan, a restaurant layout, or the choice of furniture in a guest room—operational efficiency must be embedded from the start.
Efficiency is Profitability
Beautiful design and operational efficiency do not have to work against each other. In fact, when done right, they complement one another—creating guest rooms that are warm, welcoming, and beautifully designed, while also empowering housekeeping teams to work effectively and safely.
The end result? A hotel that runs smoother, safer, and more profitably, year after year.
At LUXXE we believe in partnering early to save you from the costly mistakes that only become clear once the doors are open. The right design is not just an aesthetic decision—it is a business decision that protects your bottom line.
Let LUXXE Outsourced Hotel Services help you design smarter, operate smarter, and protect your profitability from the very beginning.
Contact Craig today and make your next hotel design project stand out, but also be profitable – craigc@luxxe.com.au