As many of you know, Rebecca and I have moved our base of operation from Maine to Southwest Florida.  What started as a vacation a year ago has turned into a permanent move to a place as close to paradise as we have ever found.  We are both profoundly happy with our decision, and have made Florida our permanent residence.  We will likely be back to New England during some time each summer, and, despite rumors to the contrary, we continue to work at Quantum Hospitality to help both present and prospective Innkeepers.  However, the focus of our business has changed, and we wanted to explain what we are currently doing with this business.

Since we joined this business in 2003, Rebecca and I have worked with many, many Innkeepers to sell their Inns.  Over the years it became increasingly clear to us that we could not help out buyers to make sure that they protected themselves in purchasing an Inn while at the same time representing the seller to try to get the highest price possible.  There seems to be an inherent conflict of interest in this approach.   Further, trying to conduct a business involving inns for sale around the nation may continually run afoul of the many state laws restricting such activities to state licensed real estate brokers.  Further, running seminars for buyers is just one aspect of the marketing of Inns on behalf of Inn sellers, and, again, fostering this relationship of trust with potential buyers just to sell Inns on behalf of Inn sellers is something that may have serious conflicts of interest.  We have heard too many horror stories of good people buying Inns at highly inflated prices that are simply not justified by the underlying economics and financial results.  This is especially true in today’s fractured and recessionary real estate market.   

We have decided that as a company, we would no longer take part in the representation of sellers in connection with the sale of Inns, and will not conduct prospective Innkeeper seminars just to develop buyers for Inn sales.  Instead, we will take on limited engagements, strictly on a consulting basis, to help protect buyers in connection with their purchase of a country inn or bed and breakfast inn.  This consulting work for buyers will involve detailed financial analysis of a prospective Inn business purchases along with a thorough review of the operational, marketing, and asset-based aspects of such a business.  It will not involve the real estate process of buying and financing the Inn, except to make sure that the buyers have proper independant counsel and other business professionals on board to assist them and to protect their interests. 

We also will be continuing our business of consulting with existing Innkeepers to make their Inns as strong as possible.   Over the years, we have assisted a large number of Inns and Innkeepers on operational, and marketing aspects of their businesses to improve overall results and to increase financial soundness.  This part of our practice is done strictly on a consulting basis with an up-front agreement as to the costs and expenses involved in such an engagement.    We find that assistance to make Inns better is a tremendously rewarding job for us, and one that is done at a very reasonable cost to Innkeepers.  It is really important for us to do this on a strictly  independant basis, without any attempt to do so merely to get a new Inn business listed for sale.  

So that in short is what we are up to these days.  Uncoupling our business from trying to get Inns on our list for sale has made us much happier in our careers and taken away a strong sense that we are always trying to steer clear of actual or perceived conflicts of interest.  We are not trying to cast aspersions on how other people conduct their businesses, just to say that this is the way we will be operating our business in the future.  We thank you for all of your well wishes and your continued support, and for the many frienships we have made over the years.

Howard and Rebecca

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