Renting a B&B In Blackpool, How Risky?

Renting a B&B In Blackpool, How Risky?

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ADogg

1,349 posts

213 months

Thursday 20th July 2017
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As a B&B owner in Scarborough I can offer a bit of advice here. Firstly it's not rocket science but it's bloody hard work! We're young for bed and breakfast owners round here (I'm 33)
but it can be knackering and take its toll on you and your partner! My wife and I decided to buy the bed and breakfast 250 miles away from my family and where I grew up, having had no hospitality experience...

We've turned our B&B around from 62nd of 183 on TripAdvisor to comfortably top 15 in a little over a year and it really does make a difference. We made sod all last year but it was our first year and we expected that, this year we're paying ourselves a small wage but it's enough. There are constant things needing doing, so if you're not handy don't do it - if you have to rely on others you'll need hugely deep pockets!

Knowing your target market and price accordingly is key - price too low and you'll attract "wrong'uns" too high and you'll be empty. Booking.com and the like are necessary evils etc and charge commission on 15% plus on all bookings (so book direct people!).

I think we do OK as we've got a ground floor accessible room, family rooms and a further double and a king size, so a nice spread which is luck more than judgement, but helps you attract all sorts of people. Check out our website www.thebeachesscarborough.co.uk

I can ramble on this subject for hours, but any specific questions drop me a pm

Edited by ADogg on Thursday 20th July 23:41


Edited by ADogg on Thursday 20th July 23:43

RTB

8,273 posts

257 months

Wednesday 26th July 2017
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I don't have any experience running B&B but my family did run a number of holiday cottages and even that was hard work.

You just have to do the maths. How many bedrooms, how much per night vs how much you need to turn over to make ends meet and make a living.

e.g if you need to turnover £100,000 to make ends meet then that represents 1526 nights of accommodation at £65 per night. If you have say 8 bedrooms that's 190 nights per year per room or an occupancy rate of ~52% all year round.

Take the top 20 B&Bs and put together a spreadsheet on their approximate occupancy year round based on booking availability. It probably won't give you a completely accurate figure but it'll give you an idea of what the most successful properties are managing.

My thoughts with this sort of thing is that if you own the property outright (as we did with the holiday cottages), then you can make a reasonable living at it. As soon as you have a bank or landlord wanting their slice then you're going to have a lot of years working for nearly nothing.