Getting a hotel up and running is stressful as it is, but when you have to deal with an inexperienced FF&E company your troubles will likely double. Below are just a few things that often go wrong:
1. Damaged Items
FF&E isn’t just part of your inventory, it’s a major investment that most likely runs well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions per hotel. Unfortunately, it is the norm, not the exception – that inexperienced FF&E installation companies will damage items. Even if this is covered by insurance, it will nevertheless add to your costs and inconvenience. Understand that accidents will happen but when you add crews that don’t have the experience for FF&E you have a huge liability on your hands.
2. Budget
When the numbers are tight, an inexperienced FF&E installation company will likely exceed the estimated cost due to underestimating exactly how complicated the budget can be. This is because they are notorious for offering as little as possible, and tacking on a variety of fees to try and make up what they missed.
“It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money – that’s all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot – it can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”
– John Ruskin
3. Scheduling
Just as you can expect cost overruns the schedule will likely run over as well. Simply put: items will take much longer than standard industry benchmarks to move and install.
What’s more, while schedule overruns are unacceptable in any situation (except for natural disasters and other completely unforeseen events), it’s even more of a problem if your hotel is open to guests during the moving process. As you know, optimizing guest experience is your top priority, and this is impossible to do if unprofessional FF&E installation crews are working days or weeks after they should have wrapped up.
This is a huge inconvenience to your guests and once that will not be forgotten.
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