Most hotel projects don’t fail on site. They fail in the first 90 days at the feasibility stage.
The building has been purchased, the business plan written, the returns projected to investors, the brand committed to, the management contract negotiated. Then someone hires a design team to make it all work. By that point, the crucial decisions have already been made, and too many of them rely on best-case scenarios. The room count that makes the financials stack up may be more than the building can realistically accommodate. The budget assumes minimal structural intervention, but the building needs significant work. The programme looks achievable on a spreadsheet but hasn’t been tested against the realities of the site.
I’ve seen this pattern more times than I care to count, and it remains one of the most avoidable sources of failure in the industry.
The mistakes that cost millions
The large, experienced developers are generally clear in their objectives. But even sophisticated investors can fall into traps when they’re moving fast or entering an unfamiliar market. And smaller, less experienced developers often take what appear to be logical steps and put themselves at enormous risk.
Here are the patterns I see most often.
Buying the asset before understanding what it can deliver.
Developers fall in love with a building’s location or its headline price and commit before testing whether it can actually support the product they have in mind. A floor-to-ceiling height of 2.4 metres might look fine on a plan, but once you install a suspended ceiling for services and build up the floor for acoustics, the heights become unworkable. I assessed an office building for hotel conversion where the floor area was perfect — rooms divided easily, service runs were straightforward, fire strategy was simple. But the volume killed it. Never fall in love with the plan before you’ve stood in the space.
Cutting the consultants who create the strategy.
I have watched developers cut the very people who de-risk their investment. The project manager gets questioned because the developer wants to retain control but is actually completely exposed. The design team’s feasibility scope gets reduced to save fees. The services engineer isn’t appointed until detailed design. Each of these decisions saves money on paper and costs multiples in practice. Developers save money by having a clear strategy and implementing it. There is no hoping for the best.
Skipping feasibility or treating it as a formality.
Feasibility studies answer fundamental questions that developers often don’t want to ask because they might not like the answers. But asking them early prevents far greater problems later. Budgets, fire strategy, construction challenges, access, deliveries, regulatory requirements, planning — better to face them realistically from the start. The discomfort of honest feasibility assessment is trivial compared to the disaster of discovering fundamental problems mid-project.
Assuming a building can trade through the works.
You would be surprised how many developers plan to keep a building operational during a major refurbishment without calculating the delays and risks that come with it. Phased works while trading is possible — we do it regularly — but it requires meticulous planning, clear sequencing, and realistic expectations about programme and revenue impact. It is not something you can wing.
Setting the budget based on aspiration rather than evidence.
Buying an overpriced asset and then trying to recoup by cutting corners puts the developer at further risk. Feeling comfortable investing in tangible things — the building, the furniture, the fittings — but not investing in the plan that determines whether any of it works. The plan is the cheapest part of the project and the most valuable.
You cannot design your way out of a bad building
One of the most important insights from feasibility work — and something I wish more clients understood before they commit — is that guest experience is fundamentally shaped by the building itself.
If the structure is wrong, if the proportions are wrong, if the natural light is wrong, no amount of beautiful finishes will rescue the guest experience. I have seen designers try to compensate for poor buildings with elaborate interventions. Dramatic lighting to make up for absent natural light. Bold colours to distract from awkward proportions. Expensive finishes to elevate spaces that fundamentally do not work. It never succeeds. Guests might not consciously identify the problems, but they feel them.
Good buildings make design easier. Generous ceiling heights, abundant natural light, good proportions and sensible layouts allow you to create excellent spaces with relatively simple interventions. The building does half the work. Sometimes the honest answer is that a building will not make a good hotel. That is uncomfortable for a developer who has already negotiated a price, but it is far better to hear it at feasibility stage than to discover it after spending millions.
The Basel lesson
Early in my career, long before Sibley Grove, I was working on two hotels in Basel and Zurich. American investors had purchased them to enhance, upgrade and sell. The firm I was working for had prepared designs for new guest rooms — mood boards, styles, trends of the day. Starting from scratch, as designers typically do.
The investors flew over for a meeting and within five minutes they were fuming. They didn’t want a blank canvas. They wanted us to work with what was already there and maximise the return on every pound spent. These were business hotels, not five-star properties. They needed to look good, be practical, and stand out against the nearest competitor. But that was it.
We were sent away to start again. Headboards were retained but enhanced. Services stayed in situ. Bathroom fixtures were kept except for the vanities. Some furniture was replaced, other pieces retained. The investors wanted us to work with the value that was already there.
Their motivations were purely commercial, but the outcomes were striking: lower capital expenditure, reduced waste, faster programme, support for local trades. There was a direct correlation between what made financial sense and what made environmental sense. It didn’t have a name back then, but the principle was clear — and it applies to every hotel project I’ve worked on since.
What the first 90 days should actually look like
Get the plan right and you will understand the reality, not the theory. The business plan and the design feasibility need to work in tandem. At this stage, design is not about finishes, guest experience or menus. It is about clearly understanding the challenges and de-risking the investment.
That means assembling the core team at feasibility stage — architect, interior designer, services engineer, project manager — and aligning everyone on objectives. It means walking the building, not just reading the plans. It means thinking in cubic metres, not just square metres, because volume determines whether spaces actually work. It means testing the fire strategy early, because in conversions especially, it drives layout, material choices, escape routes and cost. And it means being honest about what the building can and cannot deliver, even when the answer is unwelcome.
The clients who invest in this process consistently spend less over the lifetime of their buildings. They avoid the costly surprises that derail programmes. They set realistic budgets. They make informed decisions about what to keep and what to change. The discomfort of honest assessment upfront is trivial compared to the cost of discovering problems when it’s too late to solve them cheaply.
The first 90 days don’t need to be perfect. But they do need to be honest. And in my experience, that honesty is the single most valuable thing a design team can offer.
