Art 2: The Locker in the Corridor (Looking After the Box)
Lionel Anidjar, Hotel Project Director - Global Asset Solutions
The investment case for the spaces guests never see
Lockers in a corridor. A staff canteen with extra tables squeezed in and boxes stacked around them. A linen trolley parked permanently in a service lift lobby.
Walk through an operating hotel and these are easy to recognise. They are a team compensating for decisions made years earlier, when the drawings were still being coloured in. By the time the hotel opens, the good spaces have gone, and the operation has to find somewhere for everything that’s left.
Back-of-house space has no revenue line. It has a payroll line.
The previous article described the plan as a forecast of the payroll. This article is about the stage where that forecast gets locked in: the area programme.
The owner has a point
Let’s be fair to the owner. Storage and back-of-house working areas are always the spaces operations have to fight for, and there’s a good reason. Another bedroom or twenty more restaurant covers has an obvious revenue case. A bigger linen store does not.
So operations have to make their case properly. It isn’t enough for an operator to state an area requirement and expect everyone to accept it. Equally, the absence of direct revenue doesn’t make a space dispensable. What helps is a reasonable demand, backed by an understanding of how the hotel will actually work.
The question worth asking is simple: if this space shrinks or moves, what happens? Where does the equipment go? How does the work continue? Who now makes the extra journey?
Sometimes the answer makes the decision easy. On one project, we combined two sets of toilets to expand the restaurant, and it was an obvious choice: the space was worth more as covers. Not every square metre of support space is sacred. The point is to run the same test every time, so the obvious trades are made quickly, and the damaging ones are caught.
Show me the calculation
Often, the argument is pure arithmetic. Storage should relate to the volume of equipment and supplies the hotel needs to hold. The operator should be able to show those volumes and explain the rotation between floor stores, the central storeroom, the laundry, the kitchen and the cellar.
A number of square metres on an area schedule is only the beginning. Take an illustrative case. Remove the floor linen stores to release space, and each room attendant may need two extra round trips to the central store per shift. At ten minutes a trip, with twelve attendants on duty, that is four hours a day. Over a year, it adds up to almost one full-time employee, perhaps €40,000 annually, to save a few square metres.
For an owner, this is a valuation question as much as an operational one. Avoidable work sits in the payroll line for the life of the hotel, and every euro it takes from GOP is capitalised when the asset is financed or sold. At an illustrative twelve times EBITDA, those €40,000 a year become close to half a million euros of value, traded for a few square metres.
Sometimes, smaller stores with more frequent replenishment genuinely work. The calculation should prove it. A process that depends on someone constantly moving supplies is an expensive way to gain a little space.
Caution is the sensible default. Hotels always struggle for storage, especially in existing buildings. An apparent surplus on a plan should be tested against the real inventory before it becomes the first thing to be cut.
The back of house is getting bigger
Separating glass, cardboard, plastics and food waste takes real space and real handling, and requirements keep tightening in many markets. Add guest parcels, food delivery drivers at the service entrance, more frequent smaller deliveries and equipment for energy monitoring. None of these were in the area schedules of hotels built twenty years ago. Many are still missing from the schedules being drawn today.
Staff areas are not an afterthought
The same attention should go to where staff change, eat and rest. These areas never fall within the interior designer’s scope. By default, they end up with the architect, where they come last in the order of priorities. They meet the minimum requirement and can still feel like leftovers.
Too many end up under-specified and uncomfortable, finished in the inevitable beige or grey. A brighter colour won’t fix that. The problem starts with whether anyone properly considered the people and activities the space had to serve.
Most operators now talk seriously about staff wellbeing, and many have clear standards. Part of the adviser’s job is to understand that philosophy and show the owner what it means for the project. Owners sometimes see a basic provision as sufficient. A practical explanation usually gets everyone to a sensible balance.
Given the staffing pressures described in the first article, this is not a soft issue. A good changing room will not solve recruitment on its own. But neglected staff facilities sit awkwardly beside the money being spent to attract and keep a team. If an operator commits to staff wellbeing, the drawings should show how. In resort destinations, the conversation often extends to staff accommodation itself. HOTREC points out that the growth of short-term rentals has pushed rents beyond the reach of many hospitality workers, while only a small number of hotels can house their own staff. Where that is the local reality, staff housing belongs in the area programme, not in a later workaround.
Novelty belongs here too. A staff canteen with daylight, a proper view and food worth eating costs little more than a windowless room with a vending machine. In a tight labour market, it can become one of the hotel’s better recruitment arguments.
Software doesn’t store linen
Digital tools genuinely help with stock control, ordering and organising the work. But they don’t remove physical needs. The hotel still needs somewhere to keep linen and equipment, and people still need to reach it. A better inventory system does not fix an undersized storeroom.
The review that works is simple to describe. Follow a single delivery from the loading bay to the guest room, and back again as laundry or waste. Every point where it waits, crosses clean goods or needs an extra pair of hands is a cost the plan has chosen.
Before any operational area becomes another sellable space, there should be a credible answer about where its contents and activities will go. Without one, we are trading a design decision for a workaround after opening. The locker in the corridor is usually proof that the calculation was never done.
That calculation is about to be tested again. Once the design is costed, value engineering begins, and back-of-house space is often first in line.
Questions for your next owners’ meeting
Has the operator demonstrated storage needs with volumes and rotations, or only with square metres?
For each back-of-house area proposed for reduction, where do its contents and activities go?
Does the area schedule include waste separation, deliveries and parcels at today’s volumes?
How will the operator’s staff wellbeing commitments show up in the drawings and specifications?
Which apparent surpluses on the plan have been tested against the real inventory?
Where will staff change, eat and rest, and who is designing those spaces?
How many trips per shift will the proposed storage arrangement create?
Is there room for waste and deliveries at the volumes expected in five years’ time?
Does the destination require staff accommodation, and is it in the budget?
Which back-of-house areas have already been traded for sellable space, and what replaced them?
Could any staff space be designed well enough to become an argument for recruitment?
Are service corridors and lifts sized for the trolleys and equipment they will actually carry?
