Cant sell my hotel

barnaby-bear

slowdog wrote: »

the bar side has taken a massive hit. once it really gets going in the summer, we have always had cabaret , every night, right through to november. and some cracking acts if i do say so myself. the bar used to be packed, with the cabaret not starting till 11, it meant people could go out till last orders and rush back for a couple more hours drinking and some entertainment. then the licensing laws changed. the second people didnt have to rush back to get the extra drinking in is the second that the bar took a hit. so badly that we have had to heavily reduce how much cabaret we put on.

see now, we can have 60 people in the hotel, and we will be lucky to see even a third of them in the bar

Obviously I don't know your customers or their tastes but if the market has changed - are there ways to re-evaluate this. It's a situation of the same work for less market share.

Do people really want to stay in their hotel for caberet every night? Could you cut out a few nights a week to reduce your work load on regular weeks. You must be working 18hr+ days.....

slowdog

to answer them two in order

there is no point putting cabaret on earlier. no one would stay in for it. for example, its a nice summer evening, the sun is just heading down. would you stay in the hotel for cabaret, or go out and see the sights, maybe a couple drinks afterwards, especially if you're only down for a couple nights? that why the cabaret goes on later. at least we have half a chance then.


it is indeed the same work for less dosh. theres one thing you learn in this trade; people are bloody picky. they will come and say "we're not bothered about a tv in the room", but then will complain when it breaks, or someone has fiddled with the tuning. similarly, they may not come in for the cabaret, but when they are looking for somewhere, they look for somewhere with entertainment. people like having the option, and thats what you have to provide.

we do reduce the cabaret when the kids go back, just keeping it on at weekends during sep and oct.

and yes, anywhere between 18 and 20 hour days when we're busy with about 3 hours off a night to eat and put feet up for a while. reducing cabaret doesnt change that though. you still have to be around during the day for the bar, the washing, evening meal prep, etc etc.

clutton_2

forgive me if you wont like my blunt way of posting here -

i have only just read this entire thread for the first time - and my overall impression is that of a very dated, very old-fashioned, hotel running almost at a loss - owned by two folks who are sick and tired of the whole thing, and who (unsurprisingly) view life thru the "Glass half empty" glass.

almost every suggestion put forward by posters here - has been met with a "yes-but" response by slowdog - (except the website offer) - and this is i think a measure of the depression he feels abou this situation

there really are only 2 questions : -

do you really want to sell ?

do you want to stay ?


you dont seem able to make your mind up about this - and until you do - you will dither and yes/no/but/maybe forever and your health will continue to decline


If you want a decent price for a sale - then spend money on redecorating and re-marketing and increase your prices - even £2 a night per person will make a significant difference to your income.

or

drop the price substantially - and accept that you will not walk away with any money - and get rid of this burden forever


the longer you put off making this decision the worse things will be

btw - any type of conversion into flats etc etc will be an incredibly difficult route - a route that you have no experience in. A developer will know how to do all that - once you have agreed a price you then have an ally on side to help you with the planning application.

Look in your local papers for builders asking for property to buy - and get one in and talk to him ....... he may well know what classification your local street is in the Local Plan and he can then advise on whether he thinks an application for planning is worthwhile.


finally if you have no funds to use to improve the property - then you have no alternative other than to sell at rock bottom prices

good luck

slowdog

i dont mind bluntness and candor. allow me to retort honestly

with regards to the "yes, but" comment. maybe, but a lot of people that have made some suggestions have little or no knowledge of running a business of this type, let alone one in blackpool. there have been a great many suggestions made that i have also found to be useful and are being looked at in further detail.

do i want to sell? i think its more that we need to
do we want to stay? not in the slightest.

we have fully made up our minds about this. if you read through (again if you missed it) there are many folks here that felt that the nature of the business and the property meant that it sits in the middle of two very different types of buyer, appealling to neither. one of the major factors for this is the TO. its all well and good to say "do this, do that" by way of advice to maybe get this place sold, but in the meantime, we still have to be here and make money. as much as we may want to get the hell out of here, we still need it to make money and pay the bills. so suggestions at increasing TO are listened to.

therefor, its a bit ignorant to say we havent made up our minds. what would you rather us do? sit on our backsides and hope it sells? of course not, as you go on to say yourself. re-decorating (which is done every year anyway), re-marketing and increasing prices are all - now - a given. however - and yes, here comes one of those 'buts' - it cannot all be done now as we enter the busiest time of the year. part of the remarketing is under way, but decoration is now impossible till year end, and a great deal of the existing marketing has our prices, meaning that for this season, they are stuck, but not for next year.

drop the price substantially? maybe. dont think we havent thought about it. and will it sell then? no guarantees there. as i said, we are waiting on a new valuation. this place was last valued when the market was rosey. i've found a guy that is quite straight talking and wont BS us, and im looking forward to meeting him. only then will we have an idea of how we can re-price ourselves.

walk away with no money? would you? walk out of here and be unemployed with no home? leave with mortgage still outstanding?

there is no putting off on anything. not sure how you come to that conclusion. i've spent the past few weeks exploring other options, phoning the council, asking about grants, researching planning permission, arranging a chat with a PD (who i already know wont buy us but may be able to offer a bit of advice). i hardly call this not making a decision. we do not want to do this. how much clearer can i make it?

i dont want to convert to flats. if i had the money, sure, but i dont. doesnt mean i cant find out if the building would be an attractive proposition for someone though.

we have even contacted a quick sell firm. possibly not a route i want to take, but at least im finding out. better to know what they would say rather than just guess. its another option, not ideal but still.....

finally, yes we're pessimistic. sorry, but thats where we find ourselves. go and speak to some others round town and you'll see we are not the only ones. hoteliers and joe public alike despair about where this town is going and what state it is in.

Errata

Slowdog - I think you are being very realistic, rather than pessimistic. Looking at the hotel through rose coloured glasses wouldn't be sensible. Being hard headed and pragmatic would.
I wish you the best of luck.

ladypinkof66

slowdog wrote: »

thats an interesting option. i would certainly look into it. so yes, i would be interested to know who not to touch with a barge pole

gdb: dont get me wrong. we do have staff, one of whom is invaluable. they have done the odd shift here and there up to now, and they start back properly on monday.

monday is when it gets going again and we're nice and busy. it will be interesting to see how the season pans out. dont get me wrong, im still working on the assumption that we are going to be here for god knows how long and as such are going to do what we can to drum up more business. when i talk disparigingly about being here for much longer, its not that i think the business will do so badly this year that we will have to shut up shop. its us. my wife has been suffering for a while now, but now its starting to make me ill too. its easy to say "bring in more staff", and that would be lovely. however, i dont care what anyone says, blackpool is still going to be quiet this year. it is not going to be a bumper season.

why do i think this? well, ok, for some reason, a lot of schools are still open till thursday. very much later than normal, and its not helpful. but a lot of schools have finished. the scots and the irish have finished a while ago. where are they? certainly not in blackpool thats for sure.

on that basis, bringing in more staff when we are going to be doing the same level of trade as last year, maybe less, isnt the best idea financially.

Slowdog are you not busy at the moment with the Darts Competition taking place in Blackpool ?

slowdog

no. people tend to stay as close as possible to the winter gardens (because taxis and walking for more than 5 minutes is too much effort). with blackpool being as quiet as it is atm, they are finding it easier to find spaces in that area. normally we do get some that couldnt get that close, but not this year it seems

GDB2222

walk away with no money? would you? walk out of here and be unemployed with no home? leave with mortgage still outstanding?

That's really the crux of the matter. It's on sale at £400k, and I assume you have to get most of that to clear the mortgage and leave yourself enough to start elsewhere. You do strike me as a very resourceful guy, so I am not convinced that you would be out of work for long.

It's all been said before on this thread. The options are:
1. Redevelopment
2. Increasing turnover so that you can sell it as a going concern at fairly close to your asking price
3. Reduce the price still further and salvage what you can whilst you still have your sanity/health

You are doing what you can, and I hope it goes well for you. I'm not sure that it's worth sacrificing too much of your health over, though. It's one thing to slave away if you are young and you feel you are building something up, but I think you feel it is all sliding away from you. Really, you feel that your fortunes are bound up with those of Blackpool as a resort, which is out of your control.

slowdog

to clear the mortgage would be just over half that. interestingly enough, if we immediatley payed it off right now, it would be the exact same amount as the initial loan. so we have just paid off the interest in the past however many years.

i wouldnt be out of work for long. neither of us would. we are resourceful in that respect. im in a much different position to where i was the last time i was unemployed (a loooooong time ago). all i knew then was the pub trade, and i didnt want to get back into it and obviously, finding work in another feild was difficult. now i have built up enough skills that i can look at doing something totally different, and there are a few ideas i have in mind. my wife claims she would be quite happy working for someone else again, but i've kinda gotten used to working for myself. we'll see though. regardless of this, to walk away with no money, or mortgage still outstanding would be swapping one set of problems for another. unless of course, my rather fantastic bank manager would be nice and transfer some of what is outstanding onto a house for us. not likely, but you never know.

for now, im not touching the asking price. as i said, we are waiting on a few calls and a few discussions to happen. once they do, we will be in a better position to make a decision on that. that should happen within the next 2 or 3 weeks.

i agree. health is the most important thing. my wife has thankfully caught up with my way of thinking, and we are going to do everything we can to get out of here this year. besides, it would be nice to be a married couple for a change rather than business partners.

and yeah, our fortunes are bound with blackpools. as i said somewhere or other, it used to be busy here from easter to november. now its july, august, bank holidays and then weekends in the lights. and some of them are unpredictable these days.

Emmzi

hotel inspector tonight is in blackpool so I shall watch with interest! strikes me as an odd market.