Renovating a hotel in Italy costs roughly 500 to 3,500 euros per square metre, depending on how deep the work goes. Translated into rooms, that means 5,000-12,000 euros per room for a light refresh, 30,000-60,000 euros for a full renovation including bathrooms and systems, up to 70,000-130,000 euros per room for a category repositioning. Furniture accounts for between 15 and 25 per cent of the total in a full renovation.
These are 2026 market figures, including building works, systems, finishes and furniture, net of VAT and any extraordinary charges. They are useful for building an initial budget hypothesis and for understanding whether a project fits the economic envelope, not for replacing a detailed bill of quantities.
Contents
The three levels of work
Before getting into the numbers, it helps to establish exactly what kind of work is being discussed, because the word renovation covers very different situations.
Light refresh. This touches surfaces and fittings, not structures: repainting, textiles, curtains, bedspreads, lighting, accessories, replacing seating, retouching or reupholstering existing furniture, minor replacement of sanitaryware and taps. The hotel stays recognisable but looks presentable again. It’s the typical intervention at the midpoint of the furniture’s life cycle, when the building still works but the photos start to lose the comparison with competitors.
Full room renovation. Furniture is removed, bathrooms are rebuilt, floors and doors are replaced, electrical and plumbing systems are reviewed, and acoustics and air conditioning are addressed. The room comes out new, while the layout largely stays the same.
Category repositioning. The internal layout changes, rooms are merged to create larger areas, common areas are rebuilt, services such as a spa, an expanded breakfast area or workspaces are added, and the building envelope and energy performance are often addressed too. This is the project for anyone wanting to move up a tier, and it also involves revising rates and market positioning.
How much it costs: the numbers by level
| Level of work | Cost per m² | Cost per room | Furniture’s share | Typical site duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Light refresh | 400-800 euros | 5,000-12,000 euros | 55-70 per cent | 3-10 days per room |
| Full room renovation | 1,200-2,200 euros | 30,000-60,000 euros | 20-30 per cent | 4-8 weeks per batch |
| Category repositioning | 2,200-3,500 euros | 70,000-130,000 euros | 15-20 per cent | 6-12 months overall |
| Common areas and lobby | 1,500-3,000 euros | Not applicable | 25-40 per cent | 6-16 weeks |
The lower end of these ranges corresponds to three-star properties in areas with lower labour costs, with recent systems and no constraints. The higher end applies to four- and five-star hotels in listed historic centres, where scaffolding, difficult access, heritage authority permits and night work add significant costs.
Two variables shift the bill more than any other. The first is the condition of the systems: if electrical, water and fire systems need rebuilding, the cost per room rises by 8,000-15,000 euros compared with a finishes-only job. The second is the bathroom: a full rebuild, including demolition, waterproofing, tiling, sanitaryware and vanity unit, costs on average between 8,000 and 18,000 euros, and is the job that extends timelines the most because it chains together too many different trades.
What’s included in the cost
A quote that gives just a price per square metre is unusable. These items should always be kept separate:
- Building works: demolition, partition walls, screeds, plastering and rubble disposal, with the cost of hoisting and scaffolding always added on upper floors.
- Systems: electrical, water and sanitary, air conditioning, fire safety, data and home automation.
- Fixed finishes, from flooring to wall coverings, suspended ceilings, doors, painting.
- Fixed and movable furniture, the item the industry calls FF&E: wardrobes, headboards, desks, bedside tables, seating, beds, decorative lighting, textiles.
- Operational supplies: linen, crockery, floor equipment and the first stock of consumables, which in budgets put together in a hurry disappear and reappear the week before opening.
- Technical costs: design, site supervision, safety, building and fire permits, testing. Generally between 8 and 12 per cent of the total.
- Contingencies. A 10 per cent reserve isn’t pessimism, it’s method, and in historic buildings it should be raised to 15.
Putting all this in writing is the job of the furniture specification, the document that describes materials, thicknesses, hardware, finishes and certifications and makes seemingly similar quotes comparable. Without a specification, a 30 per cent difference between two quotes isn’t negotiable: you simply aren’t buying the same thing.
How much furniture accounts for
The furniture’s share of the total changes radically depending on the level of work. In a light refresh, furniture is almost the whole project and reaches 70 per cent of spending. In a full renovation it drops to between 20 and 30 per cent, because systems and building work come into play. In a repositioning with structural work it settles between 15 and 20.
For a four-star room, the furniture budget generally sits between 8,000 and 15,000 euros including the bathroom and textiles. The most useful benchmark remains the cost of furnishing a hotel per room, which then needs adjusting according to how many rooms have irregular geometries: in a historic building the share of made-to-measure pieces easily exceeds 60 per cent, and the economy of scale shrinks.
Anyone thinking about moving up a category has an advantage: not everything needs replacing. Identifying which furniture to change to move from three to four stars allows spending to be concentrated where classification and guests actually notice it, namely beds, bathrooms, lighting and soundproofing, while keeping other components that are still working well.
Working with the hotel open or closing entirely
This is the decision that weighs most heavily on the overall economics, far more than the choice between two suppliers.
Closing entirely cuts site costs by 15-25 per cent, because it allows continuous work, full working hours, on-site material storage and no special protection measures. In exchange, it wipes out revenue for the whole duration of the works and carries the risk of losing regular guests and visibility on sales channels.
Working in phases with the hotel open keeps some rooms on sale and spreads spending across several trading periods. It costs more per unit and requires rigorous organisation: physically separated routes, noisy work concentrated during the day, daily cleaning, a dedicated lift where one exists. The logistics of fitting out furniture with the hotel open is the part that needs planning first, because deliveries can’t sit in the lobby and installation times have to fit around guest departures.
The rule of thumb: under thirty rooms and with marked seasonality, it’s almost always worth closing during the low season; above fifty rooms in an urban setting, where seasonality is flat, it’s worth proceeding floor by floor.
Timelines
A light refresh takes three to ten days per room and is organised in groups of four or five rooms at a time. A full renovation takes four to eight weeks per batch, with a typical batch of six to eight rooms. A category repositioning takes six to twelve months on site, plus the months needed for design and the permitting process.
The least considered constraint is the production of made-to-measure furniture, which after signing generally takes eight to sixteen weeks. Ordering the furniture once the site has already started almost always means stopping with the work nearly finished, the crews stood down and the reopening delayed.
Grants and financial tools
The landscape of tools supporting hospitality upgrades changes frequently, but the categories stay stable: non-repayable grants and subsidised loans dedicated to tourism, incentives for purchasing capital equipment, energy efficiency measures and regional calls for applications, often combinable within certain limits. An up-to-date survey of non-repayable funding for hospitality businesses is the starting point for understanding whether it’s worth waiting for a window to open or proceeding straight away.
A practical warning applies: almost all measures require that expenses be incurred after the application is submitted. Signing a contract or paying a deposit beforehand generally makes that expense ineligible.
The calculation that really matters
The absolute cost tells you little unless it’s set against the additional revenue. The right approach works through three numbers: the expected increase in average rate, the expected increase in occupancy, and savings on maintenance and energy costs. The return on investment from refurbishing furniture is measured this way, and in practice a well-calibrated project on rooms and bathrooms pays back over four to six years.
It also helps to think in terms of a cycle rather than an emergency. Knowing how often to renew hotel furniture and setting aside a per-room amount every year avoids the traumatic intervention carried out once the damage is already visible in reviews. Those who put it off pay twice: once in lost revenue and once in a deeper renovation than necessary.
At this stage, the value of a single point of contact is tangible. We design in-house and build through a supply chain of selected Italian workshops, with a single point of contact from survey to final testing: that means one schedule for survey, sampling, production, delivery and installation, and a single point of responsibility when a measurement changes on site. For anyone weighing up a project from scratch, the useful comparison is with how much it costs to open a four-star hotel, because in several cases refurbishing an existing building and building new arrive at figures closer together than you’d think.
Frequently asked questions
What grants are available for renovating a hotel? There are four categories of tools: non-repayable grants and subsidised loans dedicated to tourism businesses, incentives for purchasing capital equipment, energy efficiency measures and regional calls for applications. They can often be combined within the ceilings set by each individual measure. In almost all cases expenses must be incurred after the application is submitted, so planning needs to happen before signing contracts or paying deposits.
Is it better to renovate floor by floor or close entirely? Closing entirely cuts site costs by 15-25 per cent and shortens timelines, but wipes out revenue for the whole duration of the works. Working in phases keeps some rooms on sale and costs more per unit. In seasonal properties under thirty rooms, it’s almost always worth closing during the low season, while in urban hotels above fifty rooms, working floor by floor is usually more cost-effective.
How long does renovating a hotel take? A light refresh takes three to ten days per room. A full renovation takes four to eight weeks per batch of six to eight rooms. A category repositioning is measured in six to twelve months on site, plus the design phase and permits. Add eight to sixteen weeks for producing made-to-measure furniture, which needs to start well ahead of the building works.
How much does furniture account for in the total? It depends on how deep the work goes: in a light refresh, furniture absorbs between 55 and 70 per cent of spending, in a full renovation between 20 and 30 per cent, in a repositioning with structural work between 15 and 20. In absolute terms, for a four-star room the furniture budget generally sits between 8,000 and 15,000 euros including the bathroom and textiles.
