When does a crew outgrow hotel rooms?

82.8%UK hotel occupancy in August 2026 (RSM UK Hotels Tracker)

48median nights for our crews of 6 to 9 people (n=11)

1.0median people per bedroom in our bookings (n=132)

3%of our bookings with a recorded property type were hotels (n=134)

Most crews start in a hotel because it is the fastest thing to book. The question is not whether hotels work. It is when they stop working, and most bookers find out from a site manager's complaint rather than from a plan.

Why is this question coming up now?

Because hotels are full of other people. RSM UK's Hotels Tracker put UK hotel occupancy at 82.8% in August 2026, with the average room rate up about 2.3% on a year earlier (The Hospitality Daily, 10 October). Irish hotels ran at 78% occupancy across 2025 (Fáilte Ireland). A crew of eight competes with weddings, football and conferences for the same rooms, every weekend.

The large projects have already given up on hotels. On 9 October the BBC reported that the Pontins Brean Sands holiday park in Somerset has housed about 900 Hinkley Point C workers since 2022, and that local tourism bosses want more compensation for the lost visitors. In Bedford, an empty office block is being converted into 26 one and two bed apartments for professionals working on the Universal resort, due to open in 2031 (Construction Enquirer, 5 October). On 2 October Construction News reported that workers for Jersey's new hospital are being housed "anywhere we can find".

Those are 900-person answers. Most bookers have a crew of four to twelve, and the same logic arrives much earlier.

What does our booking data show?

The moment crews get bigger, they also stay longer. Across 135 bookings where the headcount was recorded, one person stayed a median of 12 nights. Crews of six to nine stayed a median of 48 nights (n=11), and crews of ten or more a median of 180 (n=8). Hotels are priced for exactly the opposite: few people, few nights.

Once a crew is housed deliberately, it lands in whole units. Of 197 bookings with the bedroom count recorded, 49% were units with three or more bedrooms, and 30% had four or more. The median was one person per bedroom (n=132): crews want their own rooms, not shared twins. Only 4 of 134 bookings with a recorded property type were hotels. That reflects what we book, so read it as where planned crews end up, not as a market share.

So where is the line?

Three tests. If two of them are true, the crew has outgrown hotel rooms.

• Headcount: three or more on the same shift. A hotel adds a full room for every person. A four-bedroom house houses four people as one booking, one address and one van.
• Length: more than two weekends. After about two weeks the missing kitchen and washing machine become daily costs and daily complaints. In our data, 36% of stays ran 28 nights or more (n=201).
• Town: hotels already busy. If the nearest hotels fill up at weekends or for events, the crew gets moved, split or repriced mid-job.

	Hotel rooms	Whole flats or houses
How it is priced	Per room, per night: every extra person is another room	Per unit: the extra bedrooms come with it
Food	Usually no kitchen, so meals out every day	Own kitchen: cook, and pack lunches for site
Laundry	Paid service or a launderette	Usually a washing machine in the unit
Vans and parking	Shared car park, sometimes charged, height limits	Driveway or street parking, check unit by unit
Weekends and events	Price and availability move with tourism	Fixed for the length of the booking
Best fit	1 or 2 people, under a week, arrival nights	3 or more people, two weekends or longer

When are hotel rooms still the right call?

For one or two specialists on a short visit, for inspections and commissioning engineers, and for the first night or two while the crew's flat is being handed over. A quarter of our stays (51 of 201) were under a week. Hotels do that job well. The mistake is letting a three-night booking quietly become a three-month one.

What should bookers do differently?

• Decide the switch point at mobilisation, not when the site manager complains: crew of three or more, and longer than two weekends.
• Book by bedrooms, not beds. One bedroom per person is what crews end up in. Shared twins save little and cost goodwill.
• Use hotels as the bridge: arrival nights and short visits, while the whole units are secured.
• Price the full stay, including meals out, laundry and parking for the vans, not the nightly room rate alone. Our clients have saved 20-30% by using the correct market for the length of stay.
• Check the event calendar for the town before committing a crew to hotel rooms for more than a week.

Related: Our project slipped 6 weeks: what happens to the crew's accommodation?, Why is there no contractor accommodation near our project site? and How much crew accommodation does a data centre construction project need?

FAQ

How many workers is too many for a hotel?

There is no fixed number, but three or more people on the same shift for longer than two weekends is the usual tipping point. Beyond that, whole flats or houses with one bedroom per person tend to work better.

Are hotels cheaper than flats for a construction crew?

For one or two people for a few nights, often yes. For a crew staying weeks, hotels charge for every room every night, with meals and laundry on top, while a whole unit is priced once for the crew.

Should crew members share bedrooms to save money?

In our bookings the median was one person per bedroom. Crews working long shifts for weeks sleep and perform better in their own rooms, and Germany and the Netherlands set minimum space per person for worker accommodation (see What accommodation standards do we have to meet for posted workers in Europe?).