Operator search for hospitality businesses

Why the concept comes before the rent

In a hotel, rooms carry the result and the room count sets a rough frame. In hospitality without rooms that frame does not exist. The same premises can carry a high rent under one concept and none at all under another.

The first question is therefore not how much rent you want, but which concept the location actually supports. Catchment, footfall, competition, opening hours and what the existing fit-out allows all decide that, and they decide it before any operator is contacted.

What an operator will ask

An operator taking on premises is making an investment decision, not just signing a lease. Three questions come up every time.

What does the fit-out cost and who carries it? Kitchen, ventilation and seating are substantial sums, and an operator will want to know how they are amortised and who owns them at the end of the term.

What has the site earned before? Where figures exist, they are the starting point. Where the premises stood empty, the risk is priced instead, and that shows up in the rent offered.

How long is the term? Nobody invests in a fit-out on a short lease. A term that is too short reduces the rent more than it protects the owner.

Food and beverage inside a hotel

A frequent case is a hotel restaurant that no longer works under the hotel's own management. Letting it separately can be the better answer than closing it, but the contract has to settle the points where the two businesses touch.

Breakfast is the obvious one. Conference and event catering is the second, and the use of shared areas and services is the third. Where those are left open, the arrangement produces friction from the first month.

How we approach operators

We do not circulate the site to a distribution list. From the requirement profile we build a shortlist of operators whose concept, scale and expansion area fit the location, and we speak to them individually.

Our database holds more than two thousand operating companies in the German-speaking market, and for more than four in five of them the managing director is recorded by name. Many of them we know personally from the recruitment side of the firm, which places their management.

Questions and answers