September 2007

Intercontinental Hotels Group

The Intercontinental Hotels Group wished to provide a consistent brand image across their national hotel network. They decided to refurbish 1500 hotel bedrooms and bathrooms which would include redecoration, new carpets, curtains, new chairs and sofas, french polishing, deep cleaning of baths, showers, tiling and replacement of all mastic. They also required upgrading of existing meeting rooms to ensure that they also met the current brand standard in respect of decoration, lighting, carpeting and facilities. The work was to commence in February and to continue throughout the year with several hotels being worked upon concurrently.

As the hotel group had not worked with CLC previously they decided that they could not place all the work with us despite the fact we had submitted a highly competitive offer. The work was split between three contractors with CLC being awarded 40% and two other existing contractors used by the hotel group were each awarded 30% of the work.

The programme for each hotel required that at least 10 rooms be completed each week and only on the completion of each phase of 10 rooms could the next phase begin. CLC were required to strip out the existing carpets, curtains, furniture etc. before commencing work and upon completion return either existing or new furniture in the room ready for occupation. We were to ensure that no disruption occurred to the smooth running of the hotel and that the works posed no safety hazards to guests or staff. CLC had a very demanding programme start up with 5 hotels in different parts of the country commencing on the same day.

Due to CLC’s nationwide branch network we were able to supply management and operatives locally to each hotel with travel being no more than normally required, whereas the existing contractors each operated from a single base which involved significant travel for their management and operatives. Within 6 weeks CLC had been awarded a further 30% of the work as the benefits of our branch network became clear to the client as a result of the excellent performance of our branch management and directly employed operatives.

At the end of the project not a single room had been handed back late by CLC and Hotel Managers were delighted with both the quality of the work and the complete lack of disruption to their day to day operations.