Mr. Handelsman

Finance & Investment

Selling Your Hotel Online: The Top 10 Tips for Success

By Mike Handelsman, Group General Manager, BizBuySell.com

Each year, thousands of hotel owners decide to sell the business for a variety of personal and financial reasons. Whatever the cause, selling successfully requires the owner to think creatively in terms of attracting the most potential buyers and weeding out the ones who are not really serious about buying.

According to a recent Yahoo Inc. poll, two-thirds of Americans dream of owning their own business. Potential buyers are always looking, and many of them look online. Hotels are frequently bought and sold online. At BizBuySell, an online business marketplace with over 50,000 business-for-sale listings, we see many interested buyers and a growing number of sellers in this category. Beyond simply giving you access to buyers who you might not otherwise meet, selling a hotel online makes economic sense. Putting your hotel for sale on an online business marketplace is cheaper than placing a newspaper classified ad, and will ensure much more widespread exposure.

To realize the most success in selling your hotel online, it is imperative to maximize the effectiveness of your listing. A well thought-out and well-written listing will allow you to attract more prospects and better sort out the serious buyers from the rest.

By keeping in mind the following "10 commandments of quality online listings," you can help ensure that your hotel attracts the best potential buyers, and that the selling process goes quickly and smoothly.

1. Include Key Financials

It is essential to include as much financial information in your listing as you can. Including the numbers, such as revenue and cash flow, can greatly increase the amount of views for your hotel listing, as this is the most common way potential buyers search for businesses.

Disclosing the financial information of your hotel in a listing is likely to build confidence in potential buyers. If you do not include the information, buyers might get the impression that you have something to hide and quickly navigate away from your listing.

2. Provide Maximum Geographic Information

When adding a hotel for sale to an online business marketplace, sellers will have the option to make details about the state and county of the business confidential. In almost all cases, it is not a good idea to choose that option.

Instead, sellers should provide as much geographic information they can without revealing the exact identity of the business. Most buyers search at the county level, and by hiding the county of your hotel in your listing, you eliminate your listing from their search results.

Many sellers are hesitant to provide details on their hotel's location, but doing so will almost always result in more messages from potential buyers.

3. Be Creative with Your Headline

While the details in your listing will get potential buyers to click the "reply" button, your headline is what gets them to click on the listing in the first place.

An eye-catching, well thought out headline will help separate your hotel for sale listing from the pack.

Before listing your hotel, put yourself in a buyer's frame of mind. It will help to draft a list of the qualities of your business that would most make you want to buy. If you bought the hotel from someone else, remember what features first made you interested. Was it an ideal location, or a great-looking space? Decide what is best about the hotel you are selling, and prominently feature those details in a headline that effectively conveys what is special about the business.

4. Include the Right Contact Information

It is crucial to include a phone number in your hotel listing to reassure potential buyers and maximize contacts. To maintain confidentiality, though, it is not a good idea to provide the phone number of the hotel you are selling. Instead, provide a personal or alternate phone number people can call to inquire about the listing.

Although it can help to provide a variety of ways in which a buyer can contact you if interested, you should generally avoid including your personal e-mail address to protect against spam and protect confidentiality. Instead, it is a good idea to create a new e-mail address specifically for responses from your listing. If you do so, make sure you check the account daily to avoid missing any responses.

Whichever forms of contact you choose to include in your listing, be sure you have a strong follow-up process. Respond to questions about your listing right away, and if prospective buyers seem serious, do not keep them waiting too long for information, or they will likely become discouraged and look elsewhere.

5. Use Two Categories to List Your Hotel

When listing a hotel online you will probably have the option of listing the business under two categories - a "best matching business type" and a "next best matching business type." Even though a hotel might at first seem as though it would only fit within one category, it is best to use both categories to maximize exposure. In fact, passing up the opportunity to list your hotel under a second category is almost like passing up a free second listing.

While a category such as "Hotels and Other Lodging Places" will be your first choice, choosing categories such as "Other Business Services" or "Miscellaneous Services" can only help you by ensuring that more prospective buyers view your listing.

6. Be Descriptive

The most effective way to instill confidence in prospective buyers and get them to respond to your listing is to use a generous amount of description.

When a seller provides very limited details about the hotel for sale, buyers will probably think it is because the seller has something to hide. In order to ensure prospective buyers are confident in what you are selling, you have to appear confident.

Many times, it is helpful to include the reason why you have decided to sell the hotel in your listing. Buyers appreciate honesty, and if you openly provide them this information you can establish a sense of trust that is essential to a buyer-seller relationship.

7. Include Pictures

One of the most effective ways to differentiate your hotel for sale listing from the rest is to include photos. While you should probably not include a picture of the outside or any obvious interior section of your hotel to maintain confidentiality, there are other ways to mix images into the text.

For example, taking a photo of one of the rooms of your hotel - making sure to capture its best features - can give potential buyers a good look at what you have to offer without sacrificing too much confidentiality.

Free online images databases such as Google Images can also serve as a useful source of imagery that you can help you create your listing to stand out from the crowd. However, be careful not to select images of any part of any specific hotel that is not yours. Instead, find generic images. Does the hotel your selling offer dining? If so, try to find a generic image of a table setting showing the kind of food the restaurant serves, for example.

8. Work around Confidentiality

In order to keep the hotel running smoothly during the selling process, you will probably want to be extremely careful not to let customers, employees and competitors know you are selling. This means that certain details should be kept at a minimum when posting an online ad. At the same time, it is not a good idea to post so little information that nobody will be interested in the listing. The key is providing the most information possible without giving away the identity of the business.

Finding images to include in your hotel for sale listing that do not disclose too much information is just one example of working around confidentiality. The idea also applies to the text that you include in the listing.

You can almost always disclose the state and county of your hotel without disclosing the actual identity of the business. It is a good idea to avoid including your hotel's actual address, or even the street on which it is located. Instead, be non-specific and communicate benefits with information such as "near major highway," "one of this town's busiest streets," or "one of the leading players in the industry."

9. Upgrade (if Necessary)

If you feel the hotel you are selling is particularly high-value or hard-to-sell, you might want to consider upgrading your listing.

For many businesses a standard listing will do, but if you would like to apply an extra boost to help sell your hotel, you can invest in a "showcase ad," which places your listing above others, sends it via e-mail to potential buyers who match business criteria and provides you with a prospect list you can contact. In this way, choosing a showcase ad can multiply your listing's amount of exposure and leads.

Sellers who want to upgrade can choose the duration of time they would like to have their listing featured. For example, sellers can choose to upgrade listings per day, or choose a two-month showcase.

10. Proof Read

Spelling and grammar errors are simple to avoid, yet many users post listings that include mistakes. While small errors might not seem important to you, they can instantly detract valuable buyers who are looking for a seller who appears buttoned-up in every way.

Your listing will not be automatically proofread by anyone else before it appears to buyers, so it is your responsibility to double check all the text you include. It is a good idea to write the text of your listing in a Word document, or other application that automatically checks your spelling instead of entering it directly into an online form. You should also proofread your ad multiple times before posting to ensure it is error-free.

Mike Handelsman is Group General Manager for BizBuySell.com and BizQuest.com, the Internet's two largest and most heavily trafficked business-for-sale marketplaces. Both sites feature business valuation tools that draw from the largest databases of sales comparables for recently sold small businesses and include two of the industry's leading franchise directories. Since 1995, BizBuySell and BizQuest have offered tools that make it easy for business owners and brokers to sell a business and for potential buyers to find the perfect business. Together, BizBuySell and BizQuest list more than 75,000 businesses for sale at any time and have over 850,000 monthly visits. Mr. Handelsman can be contacted at 415-284-4390 or mhandelsman@BizBuySell.com Extended Bio...

HotelExecutive.com retains the copyright to the articles published in the Hotel Business Review. Articles cannot be republished without prior written consent by HotelExecutive.com.