Why Might 2020 Be a Good Time to Renovate Your Hospitality Industry Bathroom?

The coronavirus crisis of 2020 has, naturally, made paranoiac clean freaks of the entire planet. It’s hard to even touch a door handle without wanting to start frantically scrubbing. If you’re running a hotel, restaurant, pub, bar or leisure facility during this period, you’re already up against it, in terms of the Government’s rule of six. So might this veritable downtime be a good moment to do something to draw people back to your hospitality business, like offering them the hygienic reassurance of new washrooms remodelled into luxury facilities?

Is it wise to make financial investments during an economic downturn?

We wouldn’t like to say either way for certain. After all, the likelihood is that COVID-19 has had a negative impact on your trade and turnover.

International tourism has all but ground to a halt, stripping a huge market segment out of the equation. Social gatherings have been limited, which means so have your profits (unless you’ve found ingenious ways around them, such as focusing on date nights and small family getaways). And there’s always the threat of another total lockdown in the case of another significant spike.

Which hospitality entrepreneur in their right mind would splash out on some swanky new toilets during such a crisis? Well, perhaps it’s not as counterintuitive as you might think.

First of all, yours is not the only industry going through this difficult period, so you can probably find some bargains out there right now, which you might not once the situation turns around. Then there’s the fact that, if you actually want to get people through the door (even in groups of six or less), having an environment that satiates the public’s need for the highest standards of hygiene is probably one of the best ways to go about it. Finally, it’s not really going to be too much of an interruption to your operations, right now, being that your clientele are somewhat smaller in number than they were before the pandemic began.

Shanghai Times square bathroom by Nendo

The cleaner the bathroom, the more attractive it is to the public

The UK government quickly issued guidelines on cleaning in non-healthcare settings outside the home soon after the coronavirus crisis began. Sure, this has been designed to reassure pub goers, holiday makers and the like that hospitality professionals are under advisement, as well to provide that very advice. But it also tells you everything you need to know about what the public is thinking:

‘I’m not using a public bathroom unless it’s spotless.’

So spotless it must be. And, to achieve that, let Minimalism be your keyword. The last thing people want to see are cracks filled with black mould. You might want to think about installing some kind of solid surface material, such as Corian, which is both seamless and nonporous, so it cannot absorb any dirt. Picture frames, bins full of paper towels, doors with metal frames – anywhere dirt can gather quickly – they should probably go. Replace them with clean lines, hands-free hand dryers, chrome taps and spacious simplicity.

People want to walk into a washroom that feels safe. That doesn’t necessarily mean that COVID-19 can’t live in there – only regular, thorough and preventative cleaning can ensure that – but it makes a huge difference to the way your customers will feel. A new washroom facility, properly maintained, could offer customers a level of reassurance to keep them coming back when they might otherwise prefer to stay at home.

Bathroom of the Warehouse Gym in Dubai

Reduced footfall means lower commercial impact of remodelling

If you’re running a hotel, pub, restaurant, bar, or sports or leisure facility with more than one toilet, you might want to take advantage of the reduced footfall to decorate one bathroom at a time… Temporarily making your gents’ toilet a unisex toilet and starting with the ladies’ room. Then, once you’re finished in there, switching things up.

You have the benefit of time and space on your hands right now. Once things begin to return to normal, which the Office for National Statistics suggests they are already, very slowly, doing something like the above is likely to cause bigger and bigger queues outside the loos as people become more confident to return to social situations. And bigger queues are likely to be a turn-off in the post-COVID world. The smaller the interruption, the lesser the impact on your bottom line.

Also, don’t forget, if you do decide to renovate your hospitality bathrooms, just make sure to provide effective communications to your customers so that they sense the benefit of your efforts immediately. A customer will always notice an interruption to services but, if it’s minimal and, if it’s handled confidently and with reassurance, they’ll actually be glad of it.

Dyson business products for commercial bathrooms

The cost of goods is rising so now may be the time to take advantage of lower prices

Vogue business reports that luxury brands now, overall, cost more as a result of the coronavirus crisis. This may come as something of a shock to those of you hospitality purchasing managers still waiting for those rock-bottom prices to arrive on your web browsers. So, it might be time to bite the bullet and make those investments now.

If you’re thinking of remodelling your hospitality bathrooms into something a little more luxurious, then there are still some lower prices to be taken advantage of from companies offering discounts as a means of helping themselves throughout this period of reduced consumer spending. Yet, these discounts are unlikely to last as changes in consumer habits drive the market in new directions.

The thing is, time at home has actually increased overall spending on things like entertainment, groceries and décor, as reported by the World Economic Forum. So certain segments of the market are now starting to experience not just recovery, but an actual boom in trade. Making purchases like this now might not only be a way of boosting your own trade, but also a way of reducing your financial year-end costs.

Of course, it all depends on your forecasting, your goals, the state of your existing facilities and the nature of your business. Overall, though, if your projections are headed more toward the direction of profit rather than loss during this troublesome period for the world, the potential benefits seem to outweigh the risks.

Want to read more? Check out our article on the secret to great hotel bathroom design.