Hotel opening teams spend months on the lobby feature. Six weeks after handover they are back, quietly, for the pieces guests actually touch. Menu stands. Spa door signs. The please-wait-here nobody put on the snagging list. That second order is usually larger than the first.
Hospitality · 2026-08-24 · 6 min read
A five-star restaurant in Dubai goes through more menu stands in a year than a law firm goes through in a decade. They get wiped twice a sitting, stacked at close, and dropped. Specify 3mm minimum, polished edges that will not snag a napkin, and UV print rather than a sticker. Stickers peel. Guests notice. Order the set: menu holder, table number, reserved, QR. Same sheet, same jig, same finish. One cafe using four different imported stands looks like four different cafes.
Spa wayfinding should not look like office wayfinding. Frosted and satin faces, no gloss, no loud brand colour on every door. Room numbers, treatment names, quiet directional bands at seated height. Guests walk those corridors in a robe. If the edge is sharp or the vinyl is lifting, they feel it. We cut spa sets in frosted cast, diamond-polish the edges, and keep the type simple. It costs a little more than a printed foam board and it still looks right two years later.
Door numbers, Do not disturb, laundry cards, minibar menus. Individually they are small money. Across 300 keys they are a production run, and they have to match the FF&E book. The mistake is ordering a sample in 3mm and a bulk run in cheaper extruded sheet. The colour shifts. Housekeeping notices before brand does. Lock the grade on the sample, then cut the whole house from that lot.
A finish schedule, the brand typeface, and the count per outlet, not a moodboard. Tell us which pieces are in public areas and which are back of house. Public gets cast and polish. Back of house can be simpler. If the hotel is still in snagging, tell us that too. We will hold a reorder of the F&B set, because someone always adds a terrace menu six weeks later.
A branded F&B table set for one outlet, holders plus numbers plus reserved, typically sits in the low thousands once you pass 20 covers. A spa wayfinding package for a floor is a similar band. A full-house door-number run is a different job: priced per key, cheaper per piece at 200 plus. None of this is the expensive part of a hotel. Getting it wrong, twice, is.
Hotel FF&E buyers, F&B directors, and the fit-out contractors running the opening. If you have more than one outlet, or a sister property opening next, keep the CAD. Reorders from file are days, not weeks, and the second hotel matches the first.
Spec the F&B set and the spa signs as if guests will handle them every day, because they will. Cast sheet, polished edges, UV print, one jig per family of pieces. Order the house run from the approved sample, not a cheaper substitute.
Questions about your own project? Talk to our Dubai workshop, we answer the same working day.
Menu holders, table numbers, reserved signs, spa door signs, and guest-room numbers. The lobby logo is the visible job. The F&B and spa sets are the ones that get reordered.
One CAD file, one sheet grade, one jig. We store those. The second outlet and the second property cut from the same file, so the table stand in Abu Dhabi matches Dubai.
Yes. Send the finish schedule, typeface and counts. We will flag where the spec asks for a thickness or a face that will not survive housekeeping, before we cut.
A prototype in 48 hours, a production set for one outlet in 5 to 7 working days once the artwork is signed. Whole-house door numbers need a locked count and a longer slot.
Pick your products, add a note, and our team replies the same working day.