A hotel is not financed like a shop or a warehouse. It is underwritten as a specialist operating business that happens to sit inside a building, so a lender looks first at the cash the hotel generates and the quality of the operation behind it, and only then at the bricks and mortar. That is why a trading hotel is valued on a going-concern basis, usually above its vacant-possession value, and why metrics like RevPAR, ADR, occupancy and EBITDA, along with the brand or flag, the operating structure and the operator track record, decide your terms. Every episode of Hotel Property Finance translates that specialist world into plain English.

This is the show for the people who own, run, buy, invest in or advise on UK hotels and aparthotels: operators, investors, first-time buyers and experienced groups, and the solicitors, accountants and valuers around them. We cover the full range of hotel finance and hotel mortgages, from acquisition finance and development and refurbishment funding, to refinance and equity release, short-term bridging, mezzanine, distressed and turnaround funding, and group and portfolio facilities for multi-site owners. We explain typical loan to value, loan to cost, debt service cover and the pricing bands on offer, and how to match each requirement to the right lender.

We never name individual lenders. Instead we explain the broad camps, specialist hospitality lenders, challenger banks and high-street banks, where each sits on risk and appetite, and how the Bank of England base rate feeds through to hotel borrowing. We also explain why the operating structure, freehold versus leasehold, branded versus independent, and the op-co prop-co split, changes both pricing and how much a lender will advance, because hotel value is a multiple of sustainable earnings.

Every figure is grounded in current sector research. We draw on JLL, Savills, CBRE, Knight Frank and STR / CoStar, plus Construction Capital planning data, so you get credible numbers rather than guesswork: occupancy and RevPAR trends, the weight of capital and dry powder chasing the sector, the refinancing-led shape of the 2026 market, and where distress is surfacing. The aim is simple. Help you read your own trading story the way a lender reads it, and present it to the right lender on the right terms.

Hosted by Georgina at Hotel Property Finance, with written analysis by founder Matt Lenzie. New episodes land quarterly, with the occasional bulletin when the rate cycle or the investment picture shifts.