A hotel back office is sized on 6-8 sqm per fixed workstation, which becomes 12-16 sqm total in a 30-room property with one or two people working. Floor area, though, is the least tricky constraint: the real issue is that this room sits next to the lobby and has to stay silent, and that it holds the main safe, the paper archive and all of the day’s cash.
Contents
The back-desk unit isn’t the back office
The back-desk unit is the piece of furniture behind the receptionist, 45-60 centimetres deep, holding the backup card terminal, keys and consumables. It’s an integral part of the reception area’s furnishings and sits in full view, so it shares the same material language as the desk. The back office is something else: a closed room, with a door, where cash gets reconciled, invoices get printed, meetings with department heads happen and calls with suppliers take place without anyone overhearing.
In properties with up to twenty rooms the two spaces inevitably coincide, and the back-desk unit becomes a piece with solid, locking doors rather than open shelving. Above thirty rooms, keeping them together stops working: the printer noise during a four thirty check-in and the manager’s phone calls end up landing on the guest signing their registration form.
Workstations and floor area
| Rooms | Fixed workstations | Room floor area | Linear metres of closed cabinetry |
|---|---|---|---|
| up to 20 | 1 | 7-9 sqm | 2 m |
| 21-50 | 1-2 | 12-16 sqm | 3-4 m |
| 51-100 | 2-3 | 18-24 sqm | 5-6 m |
| over 100 | 3-5 | 28-40 sqm, with separate archive | 8-10 m |
Workstations are counted by the people working there at the same time, not by headcount. A 60-room hotel often has four receptionists across three shifts, but in the back office there are never more than two at once, except for the half-hour overlap at shift change. You still need a third support position though, even just a 120-centimetre worktop, because that half-hour happens every day.
Management, the head housekeeper and the maintenance manager all need to sit in that room in rotation. Above fifty rooms it pays to separate the manager’s office, which receives suppliers and job candidates and needs a door that closes on a confidential conversation.
For the minimum dimensions of work premises, there are general requirements on floor area, volume and ceiling height set by workplace safety regulations and local building rules, which in basements and attic spaces become the decisive constraint. Before carving an office out of a below-ground room, it’s worth having it checked by your engineer, because the exemption isn’t automatic and concerns the habitability of the whole space.
The desk, the chair, the eight metres of cable
A useful worktop measures 160 by 80 centimetres. You can go down to 140 by 70 only when the space allows nothing more, and below that size the person ends up working with the keyboard on the edge. Under the desk you need at least 65 centimetres of clear depth for the legs and 60 centimetres of net width, which means the drawer unit has to go to the side, not the front.
Behind the chair you need 100 centimetres to stand up and pass, 120 if someone else passes behind. With two desks facing each other and a corridor behind, the room can’t be narrower than 3.20 metres: 80 cm of desk, 100 of seated space, 100 of seated space, 80 of desk already comes to 3.60, so the two workstations should be placed side by side against the same wall rather than facing each other.
The chair is the item people always cut costs on, and shouldn’t. Eight hours a day on a €90 chair gets paid for in bad backs and sick days. The reference is the European technical standard for office seating, with a backrest adjustable in height and tilt, lumbar support, adjustable armrests and a five-star base with castors matched to the floor type: hard castors on parquet scratch it within a month, exactly like finishes that can’t withstand abrasion in traffic areas.
On cabling, only one rule applies: no cable on the floor. Trunking under the worktop, cable ports on top, a power strip fixed to the desk frame and never resting on the floor, where it gets knocked by the vacuum cleaner and comes loose on the day of the cash reconciliation. Every workstation wants at least six mains sockets and two data points, plus sockets for the extra monitor that will arrive when you change your property management system.
Cabinets, safe, archive
Back office cabinetry is entirely lockable, no exceptions. Different locks for cabinets holding staff documents and those holding consumables, and a log of who holds which key. Depth of 45 centimetres for ring binders, which are 32 cm deep and need finger space; 60 centimetres if the same cabinet also holds boxes and amenities stock. Shelves adjustable on a 32-millimetre pitch are the only way to avoid ending up with ten wasted centimetres above every row of box files. The same construction criteria apply as for room wardrobes: 18-millimetre panel, ABS edging on every side, metal hinges rather than plastic clip-on ones.
The main safe
The back office safe isn’t the same as the room safes. It needs a recognised resistance rating, and above all it needs anchoring: under 300 kilograms, an unanchored safe can be carried off by two people with a trolley, and it happens. Anchoring goes into the floor with chemical anchors, or into the wall if the model allows for it, and either way the fixing point has to be decided before the final flooring is laid.
The insurance policy’s cover limit is the number that determines how much cash you can keep inside. Most hotel policies set one limit for money in the safe and a much lower one for money outside it. Taking the day’s takings to the bank twice a week instead of once changes the risk more than any lock does, and it affects a line in the annual running costs that almost nobody budgets for.
The safe should be positioned so it isn’t visible from the open door. A cabinet in front, a recess, a door panel: anyone coming in for a delivery shouldn’t see it.
The paper archive
Guest registration forms, staff contracts, invoices, forms signed at check-in: all paper carrying personal data, which needs to be kept in lockable cabinets in a room with restricted access, with a list of who can open them. It’s the bare minimum expected of anyone handling data for work, and it falls within the wider set of duties that come with a hotelier’s obligations towards guests and staff.
One linear metre of shelving 32 centimetres deep holds around twelve box files with an 8-centimetre spine. A 50-room hotel generates between 1.5 and 2.5 linear metres of paper a year across accounting, staff and maintenance records. Keep it for five years and you need ten linear metres, that’s two 90-centimetre-tall cabinets with five shelves each. Work this out at the design stage, or by year three the box files end up stacked on top of the cabinets.
You also need a cross-cut shredder next to the printer, because a misprinted page with a guest’s details shouldn’t end up in the paper bin.
The wall facing the lobby
Guests shouldn’t hear anything. Not the phone calls, not the printer, not the discussion about Sunday’s shift. A plasterboard wall with double boards on each side and 60-millimetre mineral wool insulation reaches good sound insulation figures on paper, but the real result is decided by the door: a light hollow-core door with a gap underneath undoes the wall entirely. You need a solid door, with perimeter sealing and a floor-level automatic drop seal.
The other two weak points are electrical boxes facing each other on both sides within the same cavity, which need to be offset by at least 40 centimetres, and continuous suspended ceilings that run over the top of the dividing wall: if the plasterboard stops at the suspended ceiling, sound travels above it. The wall needs to reach the structural slab.
The same reasoning applies in reverse. In a property where lobby, hall and reception are distinct spaces, the back office also needs protecting from lobby noise, otherwise whoever is reconciling the till at 11pm works with the bar’s background music.
A pass-through hatch or opening between the back-desk unit and the back office makes life easier for staff and destroys the acoustics. If you want one, make it a sliding door that closes completely, not an open gap.
Light and screens
Five hundred lux on the worktop is the reference value for an office, with low-glare fixtures to avoid reflections on monitors. The figure to check on the technical data sheet is the unified glare rating, which for an office with display screens should stay below 19. A cheap light fitting with the same output but no shielding produces that white reflection which forces people to tilt the screen downwards, and after three months they’re working with a bent neck.
The monitor should sit to the side of the window, never facing it and never with your back to it. With the window behind, the screen reflects the outside light; with the window in front, the eye works between two very different brightness levels for eight hours. Filtering roller blinds are the solution to put in the specification from the start.
In back offices carved out of windowless rooms, you need lighting at a colour temperature around 4000K, plus a local task light on the desk to switch on in the evening hours. A windowless room also raises a question about ventilation and hygiene requirements that needs checking with your engineer before it’s designated as a fixed workstation.
The printer, the rack, the heat
An office multifunction printer takes up 60 by 70 centimetres of worktop, needs 60 centimetres clear in front for the trays to open, and produces a noise while printing that’s impossible to ignore in a 14 sqm room. It should sit on its own unit, ideally in a recess with an acoustic door, never on the desk.
A 12-unit wall-mounted rack cabinet, 60 centimetres deep, houses the switch, router, phone system and video recorder. It dissipates between 300 and 800 watts, all of which is very noticeable in a small closed room: you need a ventilation grille or a thermostatically controlled fan, and in properties above eighty rooms often a small dedicated air conditioning unit. The rack shouldn’t be hung above the desks, because maintenance means a ladder and cables hanging down.
The UPS unit sits on the floor but on a base, never directly on the bare floor of a room next to the laundry or a plant room. These are the same checks that go on the pre-opening checklist, and that’s the right moment to do them, because once the property is running, moving a rack means stopping the property management system.
Common mistakes
A room that’s too narrow is the most frequent mistake: 2.40 metres of width sounds like plenty until you put an 80 cm desk and a chair in it. The second mistake is a door that opens inward and hits the drawer unit. The third is having no surface for the shift supervisor who pops in, checks a screen and leaves: without that worktop, they lean on the desk of whoever is working.
Then there’s the room that’s done well but has a window facing the service courtyard where the linen truck arrives at six in the morning. It’s fixed with acoustic laminated glass, but only if you think of it when the window frames are being changed, not afterwards.
Frequently asked questions
How big does a hotel’s back office need to be?
Between 6 and 8 sqm for each workstation occupied at the same time, so 12-16 sqm for a property with up to 50 rooms and one or two people, 18-24 sqm for 51 to 100 rooms. Above a hundred rooms it pays to separate the archive into its own room and provide a dedicated manager’s office. The minimum floor area, height and volume for work premises should still be checked with your engineer, especially in a basement.
What’s the difference between the back-desk unit and the back office?
The back-desk unit is the piece of furniture behind the receptionist, 45-60 centimetres deep, in view and coordinated with the desk. The back office is a closed room, with a door, where cash gets reconciled, meetings and confidential calls happen, and where the main safe and archive are kept. Up to twenty rooms they coincide; above thirty, keeping them together creates noise and confidentiality problems.
Where should the hotel’s main safe go?
In the back office, anchored to the floor with chemical anchors or to the wall if the model allows it, and out of sight from the open door. Under 300 kilograms, an unanchored safe can be carried off entirely, so the fixing matters more than the model. The anchoring point needs deciding before the final flooring goes down.
How much light does a hotel office need?
Around 500 lux on the worktop, with low-glare fixtures and a unified glare rating under 19 to avoid reflections on monitors. The monitor should sit to the side of the window, never facing it or with your back to it, with filtering roller blinds. In windowless rooms you need a colour temperature around 4000K and a desk lamp for the evening hours.
How do you soundproof the back office from the lobby?
The dividing wall needs to run up to the structural slab, not stop at the suspended ceiling, with double boards on each side and mineral wool insulation in the cavity, and the electrical boxes on both sides need to be offset by at least 40 centimetres. The weak point remains the door: you need a solid door with perimeter sealing and a floor-level drop seal, because a light door cancels out the work done on the wall.
