By Peter Seymour, director Hotels and Leisure, at Graham + Sibbald
“I wrote an article earlier in the year looking at the activity in the Scottish hotel market, suggesting that the tide was turning, and we were starting to see growing activity in the market.
As we draw to the end of the year and so we start to reflect on 2025 and how the market has behaved over that period, I am pleased to confirm that activity levels have significantly improved in 2025 compared to 2024.
Looking back at 2024, we only saw a slight increase of 7% in single asset sales outside of London.
I do expect 2025’s statistic to be significantly improved when the results of all transactions across the market are released in early 2026.
The Scottish Hotel and Leisure team at Graham + Sibbald have seen a 104% increase in the volume of sales in the current calendar year.
This covers Hotels, Pubs, Restaurants, Cafes, Wedding Venues, and the odd other leisure business. This improvement follows the trend we have seen in the increase in viewings, and activity from buyers in the market during late 2024 and early 2025.
With over 6000 active buyers registered with the firm we have an excellent insight into the market. Our data suggests that the majority of enquiries (74%) are for assets which are for sale, rather than for lease.
This suggests that the majority of enquiries we have are looking for an asset backed investment. The other key trend is that most buyers are flexible over geographical areas, which would suggest they are looking for a lifestyle business, a profitable existing operation, or a business that meets price and turnover more than location.
The top three regions where we are seeing interest are Edinburgh, The Highlands, and Northwest England. All of which are strong tourist locations, which is not wholly surprising, as these are the three main areas where visitor numbers and recent publicity have supported the sector.
When reviewing our transactions we can see that the marketing period for sales is around 10 months for sales and around seven months for letting, which suggests that the freehold market takes longer.
That being said there are areas where sale periods are between 12 to 18 months still. Patience is key when selling your business, as these things take time to generate the right buyers.
We have over the last 140 deals completed by the team in Scotland seen 17% achieve a price above asking, 16.9% achieve asking price, with the remaining sales seeing an average of only 10% below asking price. This highlights the importance of setting the right price at the outset, with some room for negotiation as the majority of deals are slightly less than asking price.
We have also seen a trend that shows hotels above £500,000 take longer to sell, with hotels above £1m taking the longest to sell. Whereas cafés/restaurants and takeaways tend to be sold within a much shorter period which rarely exceeds 300 days. We also see that mid-market hotels take longer to sell than premium or high value assets.
What does this mean for 2026? On the whole there are still major headwinds to deal with, not least the increase in minimum wages in March, as well as a review of the rateable values in April 2026.
We have now been able to review the draft rates roll and it would appear that hotels will see on average a 24% increase in rateable value. What that means will depend on the next budget and what rates payable rate is set by Holyrood.
However we are still seeing deals completing, and the team are focused on getting several more transactions completed by the end of the 2025, and into the first quarter of 2026, so we are quietly confident, where we have the right price that there are buyers out there.
Patience is needed when selling your business, and the good news is that time on the market does not appear to affect the eventual sale price.”
