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Hotel renovations are booming.
While new construction has slowed under the pressure of high interest rates, rising material costs, and economic uncertainty, investment in existing properties continues to grow. Rather than building new hotels, owners are renovating, repositioning, and modernizing the assets they already have. Property Improvement Plans (PIPs), adaptive reuse projects, and brand refreshes have become the new normal across hospitality.
According to CoStar, many hotel investors are choosing to improve existing properties instead of pursuing new developments, as renovations often provide a faster and less risky return on investment.*
For interior designers, that's creating plenty of opportunity—but also a new set of challenges.
Renovation projects are inherently more complex than new construction. Existing conditions dictate design decisions. Demolition uncovers surprises. Products become discontinued halfway through the project. Budgets shift. Lead times change. One modification can ripple through hundreds of specification lines.
If you're managing specifications across spreadsheets, PDFs, emails, and product cut sheets, you've probably experienced how quickly information becomes difficult to manage.
To help streamline the process, we've created a free Hotel Renovation Specification Template that you can customize for your own projects.
Designers who primarily work on new construction quickly discover that renovations require a completely different approach.
With new construction, you're designing around a blank canvas.
With renovations, you're designing around reality.
That reality includes:
Every one of those variables affects your specifications.
As architect Carl Elefante, former president of the American Institute of Architects, famously said:
"The greenest building is one that is already built."
That philosophy has become increasingly relevant as more owners choose renovation over demolition or new construction.
The hospitality industry is investing heavily in renovations.
Lodging Econometrics reports that the U.S. hotel renovation and conversion pipeline reached a record level, with more than 2,100 projects representing over 278,000 rooms.*
That's great news for hospitality design firms.
But renovation work demands far more coordination than new construction.
Every project requires designers, procurement teams, owners, contractors, manufacturers, and project managers to stay aligned around constantly changing information.
The better your specification process, the smoother the project runs.
It's managing the information.
Specifications touch nearly every stakeholder throughout a renovation project.
When everyone is working from different spreadsheets, emails, or PDFs, even small updates become difficult to track.
One finish changes, a quantity gets revised, a product becomes discontinued, or a substitute is approved - suddenly several teams need updated information.
Without a centralized process, those changes often don't reach everyone who needs them.
Most renovation budgets aren't blown by one catastrophic mistake.
They're lost through dozens—or even hundreds—of small ones.
For example:
Individually, these issues seem manageable.
Collectively, they create purchasing delays, incorrect orders, installation issues, rework, and budget overruns.
The earlier specifications are organized, the easier those problems become to avoid.
A specification should do far more than list furniture.
It should become the central source of information for the entire project.
At a minimum, each specification should include:
The more complete your specifications are from the beginning, the fewer questions arise during procurement and installation.
Most firms don't need complicated software on day one.
They simply need a better way to organize project information.
That's why we've created a free Hotel Renovation Specification Template that you can customize for your own projects.
Rather than providing a single worksheet, this workbook includes multiple project views designed for the different teams involved throughout a hotel renovation. The same specification data can be viewed in formats tailored to each stage of the project.
The free download includes:
Whether you're managing a boutique hotel renovation, a brand-required PIP, or a large multi-property rollout, this template provides a standardized structure that helps designers, procurement teams, project managers, and owners stay aligned.
Download the free Hotel Renovation Specification Template and start your next project with a more organized specification process.
Excel is a fantastic place to start.
But as projects become larger and involve more stakeholders, spreadsheets become increasingly difficult to manage.
A single workbook eventually turns into multiple versions shared between designers, procurement teams, owners, contractors, and vendors. Product substitutions happen over email. Budgets live in separate files. Purchase orders are created manually. Teams spend valuable hours reconciling changes instead of moving the project forward.
The challenge isn't Excel itself—it's that spreadsheets weren't designed to manage an entire renovation workflow.
As hospitality projects grow in size and complexity, many firms move to a centralized platform that connects custom specifications, budgets, procurement, RFQs, purchase orders, approvals, reporting, and financial tracking in one place.
That's where Fohlio comes in.
Built specifically for FF&E and OS&E projects, Fohlio allows hospitality design teams to manage specifications, product libraries, budgets, procurement, approvals, purchase orders, order tracking, and reporting from a single source of truth. Everyone works from the same live project data, reducing duplicate entry, improving collaboration, and giving teams real-time visibility into every stage of the project.
One concern firms often have about moving away from spreadsheets is migrating years of specification data.
Fohlio solves that with an AI-powered bulk import tool that can quickly import existing Excel specification files—including templates like this one—and automatically convert them into structured project data. Instead of manually recreating hundreds or thousands of specification lines, teams can launch projects in Fohlio while preserving the work they've already done.
The free Excel template is an excellent way to organize your current renovation projects. And when your projects eventually outgrow spreadsheets, Fohlio provides a seamless path to a connected specification and procurement workflow—without starting over.
Ready to see how hospitality firms manage renovation projects from specification through procurement? Schedule a personalized Fohlio demo today.