Cant sell my hotel

barnaby-bear

taxi73 wrote: »

The hotel he has is a nice enough hotel but is the only hotel on the street...the rest is residential and resident only parking with overly zealous traffic wardens.

So quiet? No bars, discos or pubs turning out which must be a problem elsewhere.
Coach parties don't care about parking.

Thanks for the background - very interesting.

Errata

I guess there are two separate problems:

sort things out as cheaply as possible and be clear about what type of holidaymaker the hotel wants to attract (I'm a coffin dodger and the gallery frightened the crap out of me, it looked like the hotel from hell). The place needs to be kept running with increased occupancy until it sells.

The second problem is how to sell it. Others will have suggestions about this, I haven't a clue.

poppysarah

If you want to sell it reduce the price. If you want to stay and increase business then ask.

justjohn

Have you ever been fully booked?
i have stayed at chaplins , they charge 20 per night but i get a discount as a regular customer. Would it be viable too contact the smaller b&b' s and get them too pass there customers onto you when fully booked for a back hander?
The smaller b&b's do get fully booked often.

I get the feeling you want too offload this property asap. My opinion is there is not many options. Get the revenue up or drop the price.

If it was me i would advertise on daltons with offers over £???? and see what comes out of the woodwork. All depends how much off a noose around your neck the property is.

Ian_W

Sorry I can't be more positive but if you check RIGHTMOVE there are around 200 commercial properties for sale in Blackpool in the £200-£400K asking price range, the vast majority (90%?) are guest houses and B&B's.

As the taxi driver chappy said there are just too many of them for the visitor numbers and, as a result, too many of them that are not commercially viable. In fact you can buy some multi-room guest houses cheaper than reasonably nice 2 or 3 bed houses!

Commercial borrowing (like mortgages) is much harder these days and based on your turnover and profit you really need a cash buyer as no-one will be able to borrow to buy it - perhaps why the previous owner sold using a private mortgage.

If you really need to sell so desperatley then I'm afraid you're looking at fire sale prices to attract a buyer unless the good folks on here can magic a huge increase in your profits. Sorry!

charliee_3

barnaby-bear wrote: »

. a 25 room hotel with 2 really good units of family occupation might be more appealing - for an extended family to run.... or the possibility of a more manageable size guest house with a few rental flats in the remaining space?
.

i like the idea of converting some of the rooms into a couple of flats.. if you dont have any tenants in them at any point you can rent them out as kind of 'suites' or managed apartments (cleaning daily, etc) for short term rent to people staying in blackpool... there must be a market for renting to pantomine actors during the season, etc and having acess to the bar/ restaurant would be a bonus...and as one of the others says the owner accomodation is shocking (if that depressing room with oil heater is your lounge) , so these flats give them another option for living there..

the travelodge is a huge blow.. they are charging £56 a room (for tonight), which while it is more expensive, when you factor in that their family room sleeps 3 adults or 2 adults and 2 children. i cant tell from your website if you charge full price for children, but if you do that would make your room £60 per night. (i agree that you would be better charging a room rate than a pppn rate)
BUT..you can offer the personal touch and I assume your rate includes breakfast (again it doesnt say) which is a good selling point if your breakfast is worth having (i have had some disgusting excuses for breakfasts in hotels)... but then the parking issue..could you maybe negotiate a discount with one of the local car parks for your customers?

I agree wth the others, you either have to work out how to make this business more profitable and easier to manage as it the moment it is slowly killing you... or you need to cut your losses and sell for the lowest price.. if its a residential street a developer may buy it to convert it into flats anyway if the hotel isnt viable.

auction might work, put a reserve on that will be enough to pay your mortgage and costs plus the fees and see what it fetches.. either it will sell or it wont, but in the meantime polishing your website up a bit will do no harm at all to attract prospective guests or buyers...

i also agree about the event photos, its not clear who your target market is.. i think it is good to show how much fun your events are, but there are too many photos to wade through so.. just pick a few of the best ones to represent each event, label them or arrange them in folders and leave the others of drunken debauchery for the facebook page

Scabs

My brother was in the hotel industry when he was younger and after leaving uni got an assistant managers job in a large 3 star hotel. The hotel paid peanuts but it was getting him experience and it was good for his c.v. and career. Its just an idea but would it be viable to employ a manager straight out of uni so you could persue a different career. You could train them and once you feel they are capable then leave them to run the place, it would be a new pair of eyes to see any changes needed and if they are focused and motivated may boost business. It sounds to me like you both need a change and waiting for it to sell may take time so this idea may provide this change.
Just an idea.

slowdog

there have been some outstanding suggestions here both before and after my absence from the site. a massive thank you to everyone that has posted

theres a few points i want to run through. well, responses to bits and pieces i've read. i will be as brief as possible.

breakfast is included. im not going to say, like the evening meals, its a la carte quality. its good honest grub. i have only ever had one complaint about my breakfast, and its that i hadnt cremated (and i mean cremated) the fried egg. seriously. im aware there may be people that dont say anything, but for the vast vast majority, its all good. re: evening meals, yes the menu is basic. but, and im being honest here, its what people want. i once made a cracking gravy fro example. got carried away and decided to do something OTT chef-y and made it from scratch. everyone complained as they thought it was off. there was nothing wrong with it. just not what they liked. back to the powdered! theres other examples, but ultimatly, its just what they want.

facebook flyer compo impresses me, but im not sure i get the jist properly. a little more elaboration? realise it might just be me being thick.

shuttles not needed as can walk to pleasure beach in 10 minutes

i would like to make some bigger better rooms. needless to say, cost in an issue, but i liek the idea non-the-less

youth hostel. i wonder if that would actually work. if they get the funding, the council are building a £150m+ new college cmapus right next door to us (well, across the car park). student accomodation FTW maybe?

daily towels - we do and we dont. we have a sign in the bathrooms that states "if you want your towels replacing, please leave them in the shower tray." going on to (briefly) explain the less we wash, the better for the environment. but for the life of me, i cant remember if this was a suggestion or a "you have to" from someone at the tourist board.

oh, we only have a residents licence, so dining and bar to external folk is out of the question. we cant change it either.

local restaurants - not really. 75% are town centre or prom, with only a few others dotted here and there

who said we dont have owner accomodation? as someone spotted, yes we do.(yes, the rooms with the grey gas fire). you may be shocked to learn this, but it is one of the better examples of owner accomodation in guest houses / small hotel. you're gonna have to trust me on that one.

how many weeks are we full? i could answer that but its unimportant. reason being, the number has decreased over the past 2 / 3 years. this has as much to do with the decline in blackpool as it has the current economy and recession. that sounds like a cop out. look at it this way. this place used to make stupid money, and was full from easter to lights switch off (early nov). over the past 10 years, the visitor numbers to blackpool has fallen through the floor, as my taxi driving friend will attest to. its easy to say we might be doing things wrong in some ways, but believe me, this place is a hell of a lot better than it was when my wife took it over. it couldnt have gotten an AA award back then. now we can (and are due to get soon). so the standards have gone up, and the numbers have gone down. go figure.

talking of mr taxi guy. thanks for the kind words. im already on all local estate agents, but they didnt reduce the price to its current level last time i asked them to. thats a call for monday.

we do only have showers. we pinched the only room with a bath. gotta have one luxury havent we?

the only rowdiness we get is the once in a while passing of footy supporters or !!!!ed up local teens. but then, who doesnt?


anyway, sorry for the huge post. i have been going through all this with a fine comb and picking out (and listing) all the compliments and crticisms, and, in bullet form, they will be looked through and pondered and discussed.

however, something struck me today. this is how our busy times work at the moment. summer (ie: next week onwards) = very busy. not as good as normal, but a lot of this has to do with the recession. advanced bookings are surprisingly good, but not where they should be. however, more and more people are leaving it till the last minute at the moment before they book. illumination weekends = very busy. same as the summer really, though still loads of time for advance bookings. illumination midweeks - massive decline when gov decided to fine parents for taking their kids away during term time. bank holidays - generally busy. depends when and what the economy is doing. xmas / new year. always good, but we wont talk about last year (flu wiped out loads of guests and they had to cancel...a couple deaths too.....no shows.....that kinda thing)

so that leaves april - end of june and those midweeks in the illuminations. as my cabbie friend will confirm, blackpool is, for the most, DEAD during those times. and thats where our business (and his) is suffering. like many others. its easy to say that blackpool has too many rooms. it didnt 10 years ago. back then, all those rooms were absolutely necessary. blackpools season has gone from a 9 month season to a 5 month season (give or take), and that is the true problem

so the trick now is, how the hell can we attract people at times when there are very few people to attract? puts a different spin on a few of the suggestions here. im not saying that actually, we are doing things right, and its things out of our control thats cocking everything up. its prob 50 / 50. just i think as we decide how to proceed, we need to work out filling those dead times instead of the times that will look after themselves

however, the be all and end all is that we aint gonna be able to sell until we make some more money. unless we really cut our losses. which we cant really do

thanks again to everyone thats posted though. very VERY much appreciated. and sorry again for the HUGE post

Errata

Theme weeks / weekends ? eg

Pampering weekend for ladies, must be plenty of beauty therapists etc in Blackpool who could do this in your hotel without you charging them or them charging you, they'd charge the customers for the treatments.

sukysue

Good luck Slowdog whatever you decide.