The PIP is a deadline. The drawings are from three renovations ago.
Measured existing-conditions documentation for hotel Property Improvement Plans — scoped, budgeted and bid from a building as it is today, not as the 2009 set describes it.
Three moments produce a PIP, and all three have a clock
A Property Improvement Plan is the brand's mandated scope of renovation, and it is part of the franchise agreement rather than a suggestion. It is issued when a hotel joins a brand, when a branded hotel is sold, and when a franchise or membership agreement comes up for renewal. The brand writes it. The owner pays for it and completes it.
A small refresh runs three to four months. A full-property renovation runs six to eight. Both of those clocks start before anyone has an accurate drawing of the building.
Where a measured set actually earns its cost
Underwriting the PIP before you close
The sharpest moment. A PIP is issued at sale, and the buyer's whole underwriting rests on estimating it. A measured existing-conditions set during diligence turns a contingency into a number — and it is the one diligence item that keeps working after closing, because the renovation is scoped from the same file.
Scoping and budgeting
You cannot price a renovation of a building nobody has measured. Room-type areas, corridor lengths, public-space square footage and back-of-house geometry are the inputs to every line of the budget, and they are exactly what the old set gets wrong.
Arguing a variance
Where a design alternate meets brand intent at lower cost, the argument is made with evidence. A dated, measured record of the actual condition — with a stated tolerance — is a stronger exhibit than a description and a phone photo.
Phasing and revenue displacement
Floor stacking and swing-space planning depend on accurate floor plates and an accurate key count per type. How many rooms go out of service, and for how long, is the single largest number in the whole exercise.
Bidding
Contractors bidding off drawings they do not trust price in contingency, and the spread between bids widens. An accurate set narrows the spread, which usually pays for the set several times over on a property-scale renovation.
The record afterward
Capture before and after. The post-renovation set becomes the drawings the next PIP is scoped from — in five to seven years, when nobody who ran this one is still there.
You do not capture 300 rooms
You capture the room-type matrix. A property with 300 keys typically has six to twelve distinct configurations once you account for mirrored layouts, ADA rooms and suite variants. We capture one of each, clearly labeled, plus public space, corridors, function rooms and the back-of-house areas in the PIP scope. That is the difference between a two-week engagement and a two-day one, and nobody has ever wanted the two-week version.
Deliverables are the standard set: dimensioned floor plans in DWG on AIA layers, plotted PDF sheets, measured wall geometry in DXF, area calculations, and an interactive walkthrough your design team and your contractor can both work from without flying anyone in.
Scheduling around a live property
Capture is quiet, takes no power, needs no crew and displaces nobody, so guest-facing spaces can be captured in low-occupancy windows without closing anything. In Arizona that usually means the summer shoulder — which is also when most properties schedule capital work, so documenting before the work starts is considerably more useful than documenting after. Function space is captured between events, typically early morning.
Occupied properties needing after-hours or phased access carry a 25% complexity uplift, published on the pricing page rather than discovered in the invoice.
The same capture also feeds sales
Worth knowing because it often moves the project from one budget to two. The function-space capture a meeting planner in another city can walk through, and the room-type library your OTA listings and group sales collateral run on, come off the same visit as the PIP documentation. Splitting the cost between capital planning and sales is frequently what makes the whole thing approvable.
Ballroom capacities stop being a number on a PDF and become something a client can measure for themselves.
From $2,500 per building. Most full-property engagements land between $12,000 and $40,000 depending on function-space area, room-type count and how much back-of-house is in scope. Multi-property programs are quoted as a package with the published volume discount.
Do you produce the PIP itself, or manage the renovation?
Neither, and be careful with anyone who says they do both. The PIP is written by the brand. Scoping, budgeting and construction management belong to your team, your architect and your contractor. We produce the measured drawings all three of them work from.
How fast can you turn a property around during diligence?
Capture is about thirty minutes per 2,500 ft², so a full property is typically one to two days on site. Drawings follow in 48–72 hours as standard; under 48 hours is +35% and under 24 is +50%, both published. Tell us the closing date at scoping.
What does a full property cost?
Most land between $12,000 and $40,000. A function-space-only capture for the sales team is often under $8,000 and is the usual place to start if you want to test the working relationship before committing the whole property.
Can you capture during operating hours?
Yes for back-of-house and function space between bookings. Guest rooms are captured vacant. No guest appears in any capture, and anything incidental is removed before delivery.
Do you shoot the property for marketing as well?
Architectural and interior photography, yes — from $1,200 per half day, on the same visit. Food styling, lifestyle shoots with talent and campaign work with models are a different discipline with a different crew, and we would rather point you to someone who does it properly than approximate it.
What we actually deliver here
The services this work is usually scoped as: 3D property tours, architectural photography and rentable area measurement. Everything comes off one capture of the building, and all of it is priced publicly — you can price your own project without talking to us first.
Related: senior living communities.