Has anyone purchased a hotel/B&B?

[DevonshireDumpling1]

A hotel local to us has recently gone up for sale.
35 bedrooms - with a large restaurant/bar and function room. It’s still trading although does look like its does need a refurb to ‘inject new life into it’

Owners are retiring and want a quick sale - and it’s priced to sell at £750k.

We’ve been discussing it for weeks and we could sell our current home and a rental property we own but would still need a small mortgage as we would want to make the refurbishments straight away and ‘relaunch it’
There is an owners apartment on site so we would move in.

We are both currently in full time employment and we would probably continue this for a few more years until we’ve built up a real profitable business.

Just wondered if anyone has ever done it and can offer advice?

One post after she'd said that she and her DH were both going to keep doing their fulltime jobs, having bought a 35 bedroom hotel to renovate and run 😆

I think that for some people who have experience in the industry and have run successful restaurants/pubs/hotels etc They can see certain properties and can immediately see what needs doing to revamp a place or what direction a business should go in, and behind them is a 7 figure budget for purchase, renovation and stock and a team of people they have cultivated over the years who have extensive knowledge of commercial properties and the hospitality industry from plasterers and plumbers to chefs and hotel managers who they can consult with or employ directly

A hotel isn’t just about the renovation. A stunning interior and a useful location will get people through the doors but if you run out of toilet roll or the cleaner isn’t cleaning properly or you have a menu that hasnt been priced out correctly and suddenly the bad reviews come in and you have a beautiful place that is haemorrhaging money and remains deserted.

So true @Yalta .

You can't just buy, renovate and run a 35 bedroom hotel, bar, restaurant and function room as a side hustle 😬

Haha very helpful - in other word don’t buy a restaurant if you have no idea of running one! Maybe a cafe would have been better.

I would be interested to know what you decided. We are currently up for sale as we want to move closer to family and grandchild. We gave up our 9-5 jobs (7-7 with travelling) and bought a B&B in Devon. No hospitality experience but husband could cook and we both can clean, plus he has a head for finance (which I certainly don’t). After many viewings, we bought the eight bed place, a 19c Georgian detached house (sounds grand, it’s not - it’s a great size and easy to run - plus a large 2/3 bedroom flat for us at rear). Honestly how I wish we’d made this move earlier, it was only due to husband being highly stressed at work that we made the move from London to running our own business and being our own bosses. A huge hotel is a massive task, and we chose a smaller place, We run the business ourselves - linen sent out to a professional laundry. We said if it gets too much we’d hire a cleaner (plenty locally and we haven’t to date). Our day starts later than our London jobs and it’s two second walk - in the kitchen to prepare for breakfasts at 7.30ish, after a breakfast service (my favourite part of the job - I’m the waitress and tea/hot drink maker), we have our break and then start on the rooms. If new arrivals are expected one of us will wait in for them (usually husband as I like to pop in to our lovely shops and walk on the beach). Once they’ve arrived our time is ours.

It’s been so busy, I haven’t been on here in a while.
We completed on the purchase in June (mortgage funded from rental property) - We sold our family home and completed on that on the 2nd August and we are now living in the owners apartment on site. Planning permission has been submitted as we want to change the exterior and that should be granted in the coming weeks. The internal strip out has been completed and the entire hotel apart from the owners apartment is back to brick right now. Roof works are ongoing right now. We needed to replace the roof.
Full re-wire and re-plumb next. Spent nearly 100k so far!

Well best of luck to you! Hopefully you are somewhere that gets winter trade or it'll be a long haul to see the benefits
hope all goes well

Following your dream, how wonderful! Sounds like it is going really well so far, wishing you lots of luck. And all the interior fancy bits to look forward to thinking about and seeing come to life; I’d love to do something like this. Will follow this thread, please keep the updates coming.

Are you enjoying it all so far? More/less stressful than you expected?

When will you open the diary for bookings?

It’s been stressful not going to lie. The roof was ok, but it was old so we decided to replace it along with a full re-wire and re-plumb whilst we gut the place.
The property was last re-wired in 1985 so best to get it done now! Boilers are just over 20 years old so replaced them too!

We’ve also decided to go a higher specification than originally planned. The initial budget of £100k just to do cosmetic work (which we initially planned to do) has changed drastically- we’re now looking at £285k - £300k all in for just the building work.. which will take our investment up to £975k.

Decided against employing a manager, we’d have to pay them a salary of around £30k a year. We’ll just manage day-to day ourselves when we open (planning to open for April 2025) but aware that delays to building work can postpone this.

OH is working full time on the project. I’m working full time in my job until we open, and then I’ll leave so I can focus on running this venture. My OH is a builder/electrician who is self employed, he’ll do odd jobs on the side just to keep us topped up. Saving as much as I can from my salary for the next 6 months though!

It all depends on how much renovation each room needs , as you have not seen them then its impossible to say how much it will cost ?

your just guessing, as are all the other posters.

All sounds good op , good luck for the future.

OP, I think you're asking the wrong people. Everyone is responding according to their own experiences (all negative from what I've read so far) or fears.

Best to ask people who actually KNOW something about hospitality, in the sense that they have done similar or run big projects in hospitality.

My advice is to do your research. And as someone upthread mentioned, look at the books.

My advice is to check for updates! OP bought the property and is currently renovating it.

Seems like OP that you have got the renovation project in hand. Great job!

You mention that you won’t be employing a manager and that you’ll be doing all the work yourself of managing it. I’m guessing you’ve considered employing staff? You can’t do everything in a 35 bed hotel by yourself and your OH (how often will he be working?)

My parents had a 26 bedroom hotel in Blackpool on the promenade for 22 years before selling up in 2015 to take retirement. They employed 5 permanent staff all year round and then 15 seasonal staff - cleaners/kitchen/bar/waiting and reception.
The hotel was turning over £185k a year and as you are probably aware, Blackpool is a very competitive market.

Days used to start at 4.30am with breakfast prep and finish at 11pm - 1am when the bar closed!

If you want to maximise profits, you could offer a lunch service? Carvery on a Sunday? Evening meals? My parents introduced this probably about 10 years after opening and they wish they done it sooner!

There is an 18 bed carehome near us for sale needing a full reno... no one wants to touch it with a barge pole. A developer will knock it down and build on the land, only way it will sell.

The cost to re-wire, re-roof, re-plaster, get new windows and keep it heated so it doesn't get damp again straight away alone would cost far more than its worth. And that's just the bare basics.

To reno of a 5 bed with long standing condensation damp and nothing updated since the 60s (but lived in until just a few months ago) we looked at would have been 50k (in the north of england) and thats just to turn it into a basic modern house. So average of 10k per bedroom so do you have £350k+ spare for the reno work?