I’ve always dreamed of buying a hotel. When you are in full control, you can really master the guest experience, whereas leasing has many limitations.
For years, I’ve iterated this idea, clarifying where and what. I still need to figure out a couple of things, including financing.
But I’m almost ready now. Although my Selina takeover attempt was not successful, it was a very good mental exercise.
Trying an experiment
There are still many things that are unclear for me about buying a hotel, so I decided to try an experiment.
I’m going to call to a couple of friends and bombard them with questions.
Fun twist? I’m recording these video calls because I believe there is no such content out there. These recordings are raw conversations, no fancy editing and no ambition to become a youtuber/podcaster 😀
The first person I talked with is David Kijlstra. He is really good in hotel sales and marketing. I wanted to brainstorm with him the concept, what’s the ideal number of rooms, risks, and a few other topics.
I always try to build new projects that can benefit from my existing ones. Trying to find a competitive advantage. David assumed that my idea is to build a small hotel for company offsites. Well, not exactly. Want to build an ultimate experience for small groups (10-20 people): sports groups, large family meetings, coliving popups, yoga retreats and yes, team offsites too.
My plan with company offsites is that this place can be a sandbox for new ideas that we can then replicate them with our Surf Office partners.
And being completely honest with you, publishing all the journey of buying hotel is probably going to be a good marketing for BTH.
My frustration of not finding any good opportunities
After telling David about my frustration, that I'm not not interested in any of the hotels that are officially for sale, he advised me to approach independent hotels that are on Booking.
David identified that ratings on Booking.com can tell you quite precisely where the opportunities are.
So, the ideal hotel to approach has on Booking these ratings:
- Bad overall rating
- Excellent location rating
- Bad “value for money” rating
It forms a nice triangle, so I gave it a name: "David's Triangle" 🔺
This way, you can find hotels with massive potential because of their location, but they need to be managed better. The owners will likely talk with you about a potential sale.
I had to test it by myself, made a list of hotels around Lisbon that look interesting for me but they are not for sale. Then I gathered Booking ratings and visualize.
I found it pretty accurate.
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