Every time a hotel room is taken out of service for painting or refurbishment, availability is reduced and revenue takes a hit.
The challenge isn't the painting itself. It's what happens once the room is closed. How does the team track progress across shifts? Who owns the handover between painting, inspection, and housekeeping? And critically: how long does the room actually stay out of order versus how long it should?
In 2026, with GOPPAR down 4.2% and profit margins at 34.5%, even small overruns directly impact performance. While UK RevPAR growth is forecast at just 1.5% to 1.8%, every room and every day counts.
Without clear work tracking and ownership, painting jobs drift. Inspections get delayed, follow-ups are missed, updates fall through the cracks. The delays build quietly in the background, only becoming visible once they've already affected availability, forecasting, or revenue.
When rooms stay out of service longer than necessary, the impact extends far beyond a missed nightly rate. Poor tracking creates operational friction across teams and introduces risks that often only surface once guests are affected.
At the centre of it all: information silos. Updates are shared via text, spreadsheets, PMS notes, or calls between departments. By the time everyone has the same picture, it's already out of date.
At any moment, hotel teams need to know exactly where each room stands:
This visibility isn't just about today. It supports accurate forecasting. If a group arrives Friday and three rooms are still being painted, the team needs clarity now, not on the day of arrival.
Photo evidence is a core operational requirement, not an optional extra:
The later an issue is identified, the more it costs to fix, both operationally and financially.
Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, hotels remain responsible for fire safety throughout refurbishment work. During painting projects, this includes:
Without clear documentation, these checks are easy to miss, especially when multiple rooms are being painted simultaneously.
Painting projects provide valuable performance data if tracked consistently:
If one contractor consistently completes rooms in 2.5 days while another averages four, the difference directly affects room availability, revenue, and future scheduling decisions.
To manage painting projects effectively, hotels need to understand their full financial impact:
What's often overlooked is opportunity cost. Closing five rooms in July versus November can result in dramatically different revenue losses, sometimes 2 to 3x higher during peak season. Without clear tracking and planning, refurbishment timelines are often driven by contractor availability rather than commercial impact.
On paper, tracking painting work seems straightforward: schedule it, complete it, inspect it, return the room to service.
In reality, most hotels face something different:
Room status changes faster than systems are updated. The painter says a room is done, but housekeeping hasn't heard. Front desk assumes availability based on yesterday's information.
Ownership becomes unclear. Who confirms completion? Who inspects first? Who's responsible for the final sign-off?
Priority rooms slip through the cracks. A VIP guest arrives Friday, but nobody flagged the room as urgent. The painting crew just worked through their normal list.
Managers only see the impact once it's too late. By the time forecasting looks wrong or a guest complains, availability is already affected.
This isn't a people problem. It's a systems problem. Spreadsheets, text messages, and verbal updates can't keep pace with the coordination required when multiple rooms are in different stages of work across overlapping shifts.
What hotels need is simple: one operational view that stays accurate in real time.
To prevent painting work from drifting, hotels need a single, reliable system that keeps room status, progress, and accountability aligned at all times.
Snapfix Rooms is designed specifically to track room availability, maintenance, and refurbishment work in real time across departments.
Teams can see at any moment:
This visibility directly supports forecasting and operational decision-making. If rooms are still in progress ahead of a Friday arrival, that reality is visible immediately, not discovered at check-in.
Room statuses update as work progresses, so front desk teams don't rely on assumptions, and maintenance teams aren't constantly interrupted for updates.
Painting schedules don't exist in isolation. They directly affect arrivals, group bookings, and guest experience.
Snapfix Rooms allows hotels to flag priority rooms:
These rooms automatically move to the top of task lists, ensuring painters, supervisors, and housekeeping teams are aligned around the same commercial priorities, not working in silos.
Every stage of painting work is supported by mandatory photo documentation:
Tasks cannot be closed without visual confirmation, creating built-in accountability and a clear audit trail. A simple traffic-light view shows whether work is new, in progress, or complete, giving instant clarity across departments, shifts, and language barriers.
The outcome is straightforward but powerful: painting finishes when expected, inspections happen on time, housekeeping knows exactly which rooms to service, and front desk teams can manage availability with confidence.
When The Morrison Hotel Dublin, a five-star Curio Collection by Hilton property, implemented Snapfix, task ownership and visibility improved immediately. Maintenance and housekeeping activities moved from reactive and fragmented to structured and predictable.
As Hotel Manager Rory Rooney explains:
"Before Snapfix, communication between maintenance, housekeeping, and management teams was done via email and pieces of paper. If something was broken, there would be about three handovers to get the information. It probably delayed response time fixing issues, and tasks would get forgotten."
The Morrison maintained 96% to 98% occupancy year-round while completing a full property refurbishment from DoubleTree to Curio Collection standard. The hotel remained open during the entire upgrade and continued to perform financially while maintaining high guest satisfaction.
After implementing Snapfix, the operational team saved 1.5 hours per day, resolved 3,156 maintenance issues in just six months, and improved response times significantly.
Rooney adds: "Snapfix is much quicker, much more efficient, and we can track whether the issue has been resolved or not. The satisfaction of our guests is very, very high in terms of items not breaking and guest rooms being well maintained."
The same principles apply directly to painting projects. When maintenance teams, housekeeping, contractors, and managers all work from the same real-time system, projects run smoother, rooms return to service faster, and operational risk is significantly reduced.
Painting projects aren't going anywhere. But the way hotels coordinate them is changing.
What used to require phone calls, clipboards, and constant follow-up now happens automatically when the right systems are in place. Rooms return to service faster. Teams stay aligned without extra effort. Revenue isn't lost to avoidable delays.
The difference isn't in the work itself - it's in how clearly everyone can see what's happening, who's responsible, and what needs to happen next.
Snapfix Rooms gives every team instant visibility into room status, acting as the operational system used to manage painting, maintenance, and refurbishment work in real time. When painting work is completed and photos are uploaded, housekeeping automatically sees it in their task list. When a room needs to be prioritised for an early arrival, it rises to the top of everyone’s queue automatically.
Hotels can implement Snapfix's photo-first maintenance platform in as little as 15 minutes and start improving visibility immediately. Teams see exactly which rooms are in progress, contractors are held accountable with photo proof, and compliance checks don’t fall through the cracks.
Book a demo today and discover how UK hotel teams are turning maintenance downtime into operational clarity, one room at a time.