The Hotel Hell renovations and makeovers are often only done in the areas that will provide added value for guests.
Hotel Hell has to pack an incredible amount of content into short episodes, but the show is as real as any of the other reality shows on television.
This is also true when it comes to the extent of the renovations on the show, as Ramsay and his team do not necessarily revamp every room in each establishment.
Is Hotel Hell real or fake?
The acclaimed chef and restaurateur, Gordon Ramsay, may have started out behind the kitchen doors, but he has now racked up enough reality television credits to make him a full-fledged small screen star.
Hotel Hell follows Ramsay as he travels to failing lodging establishments all over the United States, in order to lend his expertise in saving their businesses.
Although there is always room for debate over whether the show is scripted, or whether Ramsay’s confrontations are played up in front of the cameras, Hotel Hell is no more fake than any of the other business-rescue shows on television and features the real owners and staff of very real businesses.
The extent of the behind-the-scenes room renovations of Hotel Hell
Every episode of Hotel Hell sees Ramsay travelling to a different lodging establishment, where he observes and tests everything from the cleanliness of the rooms and the features and amenities to the quality of the food and the service at the hotel dining rooms.
Once Ramsay has got the lay of the land, he sets out to show the owners of these establishments exactly what they can do to improve their businesses moving forward.
This advice often includes the renovation and revamping of the room and main entertainment spaces of the establishment.
However, fans who have tuned in to watch the show in the past have often wondered how Ramsay and his team manage to renovate entire hotels, motels or inns within their small reality television filming window.
The answer to this question, like many of the other behind-the-scenes details from Hotel Hell, is more complicated than it may seem.
In reality, Ramsay and his team do not overhaul as much as fans may expect in time for the re-launch at the end of every Hotel Hell episode.
Instead, the Hotel Hell team focuses on improving key details that may have the most value for visiting guests.
Jonathan Krach, the co-owner of the Vienna Restaurant & Historic Inn featured in the third season of the show, confirmed this in 2016, by stating that the show had redone their business’s parlor, the dining room, a guest suite, and added central air, before filming was concluded.
The Hotel Hell renovations have not been without controversy
Having all the flaws and issues with your business brutally exposed by Ramsay on national television cannot be easy.
In fact, many of the business owners who have had their businesses featured on Hotel Hell have shared their conflicting emotions about the experience. Krach said, “Certainly there’s a lot of chatter about it, but not all good.”
Moreover, Karan Townsend (from The Town’s Inn) admitted that “Everything was not helpful” when she was asked about Ramsay’s various ideas and changes.
How much do the Hotel Hell renovations cost?
Since Ramsay and his Hotel Hell team cover the cost of all renovations on the show, the owners of these motels, hotels and inns rarely know exactly how much was spent on getting their properties back into tip-top shape.
Ramsay has claimed that some of the renovations done on the show reached totals upward of $150,000.
However, Townsend, who ran The Town’s Inn (from the third season of the show) estimated that the renovations done to this property were likely closer to about $20,000, which indicates that the show’s budget likely varied drastically from one project to the next.
How long did the Hotel Hell episodes take to film?
The filming of these kinds of makeover and renovation shows are always on a grueling schedule, with studios pushing to get as many episodes of a show filmed as quickly as possible.
Owners who have had their lodging establishments featured on the show over the years have reported that the Hotel Hell episodes took between three and five days to film.
Though they mentioned that the filming schedules for these days were tightly packed with interviews squeezed in between scenes.
Brent and Afni MacDonald, the owners of Lakeview Hotel, featured in the third season of the show, told the Yakima Herald-Republic in 2016 that filming was “brutal” and that they “couldn’t wait to go home each night” once they were done.
