What to settle with hotel furniture suppliers before a group of properties orders

Three properties, one owner, and a spring reopening at all of them. The ballroom at the first needs new banquet chairs, the restaurant at the second needs tables, and the third wants its terrace set again before the season. Whoever buys the furniture will be juggling three loading docks, three calendars and three general managers who all want their rooms finished first.

Choosing between hotel furniture suppliers comes down to a short list of questions that have nothing to do with the chair itself. Who reads the order before it is confirmed? How is freight priced when it goes to more than one address? How long is the wait, and what happens when a color changes between the first order and the reorder? Below are those questions, answered the way we answer them, so you know what to settle before the first purchase order is cut.

A person reads every order

Nothing is charged when you send us an order. The site takes no payment at all. One of our team reads each order line by line before it is confirmed. The confirmation arrives by email and carries three things: the order as it will ship, the freight figure for every address on it, and how to pay.

Our invoice follows the freight confirmation. Pay it with Visa, Mastercard or American Express, by wire, or with a check or money order. Standard pieces are paid for in full ahead of shipping; a custom order starts with 40% down, and the rest is owed before the truck arrives. The property's PO number belongs in the notes field of the order, and a property buying tax-exempt or for resale notes that in the same box.

Eight pieces is the smallest order, tables and chairs counted together in whatever split the rooms need. A line on the order is a single configuration, so a banquet chair in two frame finishes counts as two lines. The steps from basket to confirmation are on how to order.

One quote for each address

This is the question that matters most to a group. We quote freight separately for each delivery address, so the ballroom chairs, the restaurant tables and the terrace set each get their own figure. Freight is never folded into the furniture price.

The furniture travels palletized by LTL freight and is handed over at the receiving dock or the truck's tailgate of a business address. Moving the furniture inside is your team's work. Does the property need a liftgate, inside delivery, a residential stop, or entry to a limited access site? Those are extras, booked when the order goes in and charged on top. Drivers will not carry pallets up or down stairs, and unpacking, assembly and removing the cartons are never part of delivery. A large order may arrive in more than one load. If the property has its own carrier account, tell us when you submit and the order can travel on it. The full terms are on the delivery page.

Here is a worked example. The owner above sends one order for 200 banquet chairs to the first property, 16 tables to the second and a terrace set of 10 tables and 40 chairs to the third. That is three delivery addresses and three freight quotes on one confirmation. Each property signs for its own pallets, counts them against its own bill of lading, and notes any damaged carton before the driver leaves.

The calendar, counted backward

Standard furniture is quoted at 14 to 21 business days. Custom work runs longer, close to 8 weeks at most: upholstery beyond the fabrics a product lists, a specially ordered finish, or a size the standard range does not reach. Transit comes after that, and its figure is our estimate rather than a date.

So count back from the reopening. Twenty-one business days is a little over four calendar weeks. Add the transit estimate, then a week of margin for receiving and setting the room, and the order for a standard ballroom chair should leave your desk at least five weeks plus transit before the first event. A custom finish stretches that to nine weeks plus transit. The terms that come with custom work are set out in our custom hotel furniture guide.

Samples before the color is final

Ask for samples before a finish goes into a group order. They cost nothing: fabric and vinyl swatches, stain and finish chips, metal finish swatches and pieces of tabletop material. Within one business day an email confirms the request. The parcel travels UPS Ground, and the trip normally takes 2 to 3 business days. Order them at samples.

The finish lists are long. The flex-back aluminum banquet chair offers its frame in wood grain or in powder coat, and the powder coat alone runs to seventeen colors from black sandtex to brushed black. The laminate tabletop with a T-mold edge runs from 24-inch rounds to 60-inch rounds, with squares and rectangles in between, and a laminate color to choose for each. Pick from swatches in the room's own light, not from a screen.

The mistake groups make comes later. A second property orders the same chair two years on, quoting the color name from the first invoice, and the color list has changed in between. Our color lists do move, so treat every reorder, and every addition to a room already furnished, as a new color decision: a new swatch in hand, the color confirmed, then the order.

A plan for each property

Keep the work in property plans, one for each property or each outlet. A plan holds the configured items, quantities, notes and saved prices, with no account to set up, and you can keep up to 30 plans in one browser. Copy a finished plan to start the next property from it, then change only what differs. When the plan moves to the basket, its saved prices are repriced against the current catalog.

Plans are stored on our server for this website and reopened through a secure cookie in the browser that made them. Clearing cookies or switching browsers loses the way back to them, and there is no account to recover. Download the project sheet from each plan and file it with the property's purchasing records.

The rule of thumb for a group is simple: one plan per outlet, one address per quote, one person who sends the order.

Questions that land on our desk

Write to sales@hotelandresortfurniture.com, Our inbox is staffed Monday through Friday, opening at 8 AM and closing at 6 PM Central Time. A message sent after hours waits its turn for the following business day. Start the subject with ORDER for specifications, pricing and changes, FREIGHT for delivery cost and scheduling across several properties, or CLAIM for damage, shortages and defects, and follow it with the project name.

If you would rather talk the group order through, book a callback on the specialist page and choose a window. Before that call, have the plans open for each property and the reopening date for each. Then browse banquet chairs, tables and outdoor furniture with those dates beside you, and read the hotel chair price guide for how each configured line is priced before freight. The full chair range sits under chairs.