The contract, undertaken as part of a phased refurbishment of bathrooms at the hotel, has seen Plastic Surgeon's teams addressing groups of between 15 and 24 bathrooms at a time, executing what the firm refers to as Smart Repairs to baths, basins, toilets and ceramic wall or floor tiles.
EXETER, ENGLAND – Plastic Surgeon, the nationwide surface repair specialist, has a national service agreement with Hilton Hotels in the UK, to carry out cosmetic repair and renovation throughout its UK hotels.
Plastic Surgeon’s most recent contract has involved their London team with refurbishment at the client’s busy Hilton Gatwick Airport destination.
As with most airport hotels, although occupancy is very high, guests rarely stay more than one night, leading to high levels of wear and tear, particularly on fixtures and fittings.
The contract, undertaken as part of a phased refurbishment of bathrooms at the hotel, has seen Plastic Surgeon’s teams addressing groups of between 15 and 24 bathrooms at a time, executing what the firm refers to as Smart Repairs to baths, basins, toilets and ceramic wall or floor tiles.
In most cases, access to each set of rooms is only being gained when the last guests leave in the morning, so that the hotel minimizes loss of revenue; while noise and disruption has to be kept to an absolute minimum for other people using the hotel. Furthermore, the hotel repair specialist is having to coordinate efforts with a general fit-out contractor which is doing decorative and other work, as well as carpet layers and other trades.
The Southern Area Operations Manager, Rob Townsend takes up the account saying: “We are now on the third phase of what is quite a demanding contract, with teams of Finishers being drawn both from our Southern Region, and beyond to tackle the damage.
“Although for many hotels we repair furniture as well as other woodwork and doors, in the case of the Hilton Gatwick Airport, we have been asked to concentrate solely on the en-suite bathrooms. This has involved dealing with chips, cracks and other damage including ‘water erosion’ marks on the baths and basins. Then there has been staining as well as physical damage to deal with in the floor tiling.
“While we do have a system for over-coating the entire surface of washbasins and enamel baths, what we are carrying out here are localised or Smart Repairs: preparing, filling and rubbing down small chips or cracks and then colour matching them so that they are no longer visible to the customer. Two or more coats of lacquer then ensure that the repairs last.”
Rob Townsend concludes saying: “We have had to adjust our timings slightly to ensure we are not in the rooms until the decorators have finished, work has been progressing well and Hilton’s facility manager seems very pleased with the results.”
Prior to entering into the national agreement with Hilton Hotels, Plastic Surgeon ran a series of ‘Repair Clinics’ for Hilton, involving hands-on workshops, repair demonstrations and Q&A sessions, to demonstrate the wide range of repair possibilities.
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