The owners of this website run a campsite after owning and running a small hotel business and so have accumulated a lot of useful experience in the general area of small scale tourist businesses. We have decided to publish what we have learnt in the hope that it may help others.
This article does not include advice about researching the financial viability of a particular business.
In our experience the majority of people considering buying a small tourist business who are new comers to the industry are people seeking a better standard of living. This observation is based on the feedback we have received running this website and also countless conversations with aspirational folks who have stayed at our campsite or before that our hotel.
Its important on this first point to consider one important aspect associated with standard of living and that is finnances - lets be clear - few people quit their professional jobs and make more money running a small tourist business - some do but the majority do not. For most people their ability to succeed in this area will have a lot to do with how well they can manage money and how realistic their belief is that they can be just as happy on a lower income as long as they are compensated by beautiful suroundings.
We dont wish to start out on a negative note but its an important point and one that you cannot get around - will you be happy when you have a lower income? How secure is your retirement picture? Would you be just as happy buying a second hand car? Do you enjoy making wise decisions with money - knowing when to invest and when to hold onto your funds?
Is your capital sufficient? Consider that only a minority of small tourist businesses are capable of substantially growing your capital - it seems wisest therefore to take a look at your existing capital and assume that thats as good as its going to get - of course of a period of several decades you will have payed off the bank loan or mortgage but lets assume that apart from the improvement in your equity your capital growth is not going to be substantial.
You cannot underestimate this one - the first time you go to view a business, try always to see it as a tourist would. Experienced buyers know the moto - look after the customer and the business will look after you. People buying in a foreign country are particularly prone to making mistakes especially if they dont know the country very well - often they are so pleased to be living in the sunshine with a change of scenery that every location looks fine to them - the problem is that they are looking at the location as somewhere to live - they are thinking of themselves and not their clients. Remember your client, the people you make your living from have perhaps two weeks vacation a year to enjoy, they worked hard, they are probably stressed, they arent looking at things the way you are they want the best that they can get for their money - location! location! location!
It has already been mentioned that the owners of this website also own a campsite and have previously owned a mountain hotel, before that we worked in computing. The single biggest improvement that most small hotel owners and campsite owners could make its the way they approach marketing on the internet.
We would strongly advise anyone who has the smallest technical ability and feels that they have the motivation to immerse themselves in the areas of web-design and search engine research. Unless you already possess great technial and graphical skill it may not be the best thing to rush out and design your own website, a better option may be to pay a professional but to explain that you want a design that you can take control of yourself - so that over a period of time you do more and more of the work and the professional does less and less.
You may be asking yourself why not just pay the professional to do everything? The answer is simple - you cant afford the kind of care and attention to detail that you need - its that simple - the professional has hundreds of websites to look after, he simply cannot care the way you can - its your business so dont expect anyone else to care like you can - its that simple!
Let me give you a concrete example - when we took over our campsite from the previous owners there was a yearly charge of nearly one thousand Euro that was being paid to a particular camping organisation, this fee was being paid so that we could appear on their website. The previous owners did not know much about the internet and assumed that since the website was a subsidary of a large reputable company that they were getting value for money. Because we had expertise the first thing we did was to start monitoring traffic from this website in order to find out precisely how many visitors our website was receiving from them - Guess what the average was less than two visitors a month!!!! In contrast, during the same period we used our expertise to nearly double the number of visitors arriving from Google searches from whom we were getting over 500 visitors a month completely free. The time and effort involved in this process was way beyond what we could expect any professional to do for us - the only people willing to do this level of ground work was us!! You have to spend some money on marketing, thats undeniable but when you do spend money you need thes skills to determine whether you are getting value for money and you should of course exhaust the free option which is the internet and Google.
Please note: This document is a work in progress, we will add to it from time to time so please return again. Also it will not be a complete list, what we hope to achieve here is to help others start asking themselves the right questions.
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All information is offered in good faith but no responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information presented here or any situation or eventuality arising from its use. All suggestions and recommendations are no more than that and should not be considered an alternative to professional legal advice.