Hospitality funding for hotels, pubs, restaurants and cafes
Whether you run a hotel, pub, restaurant, or cafe, your cash flow is seasonal and unpredictable. Lenders who fund hospitality expect the January dip and the December peak, and twelve months of statements show them both.
Every enquiry is handled by a named case handler.
What hospitality businesses actually spend it on
Kitchen equipment and refits
Commercial ovens, extraction systems, walk-in fridges. Whether you're adding a kitchen to a pub or upgrading an existing restaurant setup.
Restaurants, pubs adding food, cafes
Outdoor seating and beer gardens
Tables, chairs, branded umbrellas, heaters, canopies. Many businesses invest in outdoor space ahead of the summer rush to bring in extra covers.
Pubs, restaurants, cafes
Room refurbishment and expansion
New beds, bathrooms, paint, furniture. Add rooms or bring tired ones up to standard. Seasonal prep to maximise occupancy during peak months.
Hotels, B&Bs, guest houses
Stock and seasonal preparation
Beer, wine, spirits, food supplies, staff recruitment before busy periods. Cover the upfront cost of a busy season on a fixed repayment schedule agreed with the lender.
All hospitality
Business pivot or rebrand
Transform a drinks-only pub into a food-led venue. Add a cocktail bar to a restaurant. Rebrand a tired B&B. Each carries an upfront cost before the new trade comes in.
Pubs, hotels, cafes
Working capital and cash flow gaps
January, wages through a quiet shoulder season, and bills that land before the busy months pay for them.
All hospitality
Getting started takes 3 minutes
Fill in the short form
Monthly turnover, how long you've been trading, and how much you need. That's it.
A named case handler calls you
Your named CapExpand case handler sets out the cost, term and any personal guarantee of each offer side by side, with the decision left to you. No jargon, no pressure.
You decide, and the lender pays out
If you accept an offer, the lender pays out on its own published timing.
Pubs, hotels, takeaways: the lenders are not the same for each
To a lender, hospitality is four sectors rather than one. Lenders set their appetite for leisure premises, takeaways and pubs separately, and each publishes its own criteria for each. A freehouse and a coffee shop are read as different cases.
For the trading business rather than the building, restaurant and bar equipment can be funded as an asset, and often the fit-out with it. Cellar cooling, a new kitchen line and an EPOS rollout all sit comfortably in asset finance, where the kit carries the security rather than the balance sheet.
Age of business often does more damage here than credit history: a lender can price an old county court judgment, but it has little to read in a business four months old. A first site in month four is a harder case than a third site with a CCJ behind it.
Buying the building, and the second valuation
Buying the freehold is where hospitality funding gets specific, because a trading property is valued twice. There is the market value with the business in it, and the vacant possession value with the business gone. A hotel lender can measure its loan against the second figure, the price of the building standing empty.
That gap shows what a lender is actually pricing on a hotel: the risk that it ends up owning a building with no trade in it. Read the conditions behind any headline rate too, because a discount tied to moving the business banking is not the price a borrower who stays put will pay.
Each lender sets its own loan to value limits for hotel premises, and a published hotel rate is a starting point rather than a quote.
The quarter where everything lands at once
Most hospitality enquiries are not about buildings at all. They are about a quarter where the rent day, a supplier invoice and a broken chiller arrived in the same fortnight. Short unsecured loans are one product used for that, with the lender sizing the loan on the takings and pricing it from its own published floor.
Lenders reading a hospitality case commonly ask for twelve months of statements rather than three. A February window on its own shows the quiet season; a full year shows the summer as well. We note the seasonal weeks on the file, and the lender makes its own decision.
The three shapes a hotel borrows in
Facts checked 9 September 2026
ONS, House of Commons Library and gov.uk figures read 9 September 2026.
Rooms and public areas, lent over years because nothing in a bathroom can be repossessed
Bedrooms, bathrooms, a lobby, a function room: the refurbishment that lifts a hotel's rate card is spend a lender cannot recover, so it is funded as a term loan on the trading figures or secured on the freehold. Secured on the building, the term can run longer, which is what turns a 30-room refit into a monthly figure the occupancy can carry.
Kitchen, laundry and systems, on asset finance with the funder holding title
A hotel buys the same kitchen line a restaurant does, plus a laundry, a property management system and the hardware behind it. All of it is asset finance, and so is green energy plant such as solar on a roof or a heat pump replacing an oil boiler; some lenders will also defer the VAT. Because the kit is the security, an asset lender can look past a year that showed a loss, a wider door than an unsecured lender offers on the same file.
The shoulder months, sized on takings rather than on the file
A coastal hotel earns most of its year between May and September and pays wages in all 12 months. Money from booking platforms arrives as a bank transfer, so a hotel that sells half its rooms through an agency shows a card figure that understates the business, and lenders that size on total revenue read the bank account rather than the card figure. A short unsecured loan is the fixed-payment option, and not every lender needs the director to own a home.
How a lender files a hotel
Lenders have no hotel heading of their own. Hotel premises usually sit under leisure, with pubs and takeaways treated separately, and each heading describes appetite for the building rather than the business. Lender criteria rarely record occupancy, star rating or the split between direct and agency bookings, so those are points we put on the file ourselves.
Accommodation in numbers, and the rates bill from April 2026
The ONS counted 9,945 VAT or PAYE registered enterprises under hotels and similar accommodation in the UK at March 2025, inside 176,690 accommodation and food service enterprises in total, up from 173,515 in 2024 (UK business: activity, size and location 2025). The House of Commons Library briefing of 10 February 2026 puts 99.6% of hospitality businesses in the SME bracket on the same ONS data, and UKHospitality describes the sector as the third largest employer in the country with 3.6 million people working in it. Both were read on 9 September 2026.
Business rates in England changed on 1 April 2026 and the change cuts both ways for accommodation. Hotels and bed and breakfasts are on the gov.uk list of qualifying uses, so a property with a rateable value under £51,000 pays 38.2p in the pound and one between £51,000 and £499,999 pays 43p, each 5p below the equivalent standard multiplier, replacing the 40% relief of 2025/26 and its £110,000 cap per business. A hotel rated at £500,000 or above is outside that scheme and pays a higher multiplier set 2.8p above the standard one (guidance updated 30 March 2026, factsheet updated 30 January 2026). A lender reading a 2026/27 forecast will expect the rates line to have moved in one direction or the other.
Sources
- ONS: UK business, activity, size and location 2025 (enterprises by SIC class, March 2025)
- House of Commons Library: hospitality statistics and policy, 10 February 2026
- UKHospitality: facts and stats
- Gov.uk: business rates multipliers for qualifying retail, hospitality or leisure properties
- Gov.uk: Budget 2025 retail, hospitality and leisure factsheet
- The Insolvency Service: company insolvency statistics
- British Business Bank: Small Business Finance Markets
- Gov.uk: finance and support for your business
Lender figures were read from the lenders' own published guides on 7 September 2026 and can change without notice.
What a lender asks for
A hotel, a bar or a restaurant group is read on its takings by season, its premises and its people, and a lender asks for the evidence of each.
- ✓Recent business bank statements or an Open Banking connection, read for the pattern of takings across the week and the year, and for the rent, rates and VAT leaving on time.
- ✓The card acquirer’s statements and, for a hotel, the occupancy and average room rate by month, because those are the figures a lender can verify.
- ✓The lease or the freehold: for a leasehold, the remaining term, the rent and the break clauses; for a freehold purchase, the price and the lender’s own valuation, which for a trading hotel or pub is on the profits method.
- ✓The last filed accounts and current management figures, with the gross margin on food, drink and rooms, and the wage bill as a share of sales.
- ✓The licences: the premises licence, the designated premises supervisor and, for a hotel, the fire risk assessment, because a lender will not fund a business that cannot lawfully trade.
Which stages are in your hands
Hospitality facilities follow the season and the premises, and the stages below are the operator’s to control.
Timing against the season
A refurbishment funded in the quiet months is paid for by the busy ones. An application made in the busy season is read on the peak and tested by the trough.
The valuation on a trading property
A hotel or a pub is valued on its trading, so the valuer needs the accounts and the trading figures as well as access. Having both ready shortens the report.
The landlord’s consent and the licences
Works on a leasehold need the landlord’s consent; a change to the trading hours or the layout may need a licence variation. Both are the operator’s to obtain and both are asked for.
Separating the sites
A group with several sites keeps a set of figures for each. A lender funding one site reads that site’s figures, and a group that cannot separate them is read on the weakest.
What can go wrong
Hospitality borrowing fails on the season, the premises and the margin.
- Level instalments against seasonal takings. A facility collected monthly in equal sums is paid in January from takings that came in August. Operators who have not put the summer aside find the winter instalments hard.
- A refit that closes the doors. A refurbishment that stops trading for six weeks costs six weeks of takings on top of the works. Lenders ask whether the business trades through it.
- The wage bill as a share of sales. A lender reads staff costs against takings before it reads the rent. A business whose wages have crept above the trade’s usual share is sized smaller.
- VAT and rent on the same quarter day. The VAT quarter and the rent quarter land together, and the statements show the strain. A facility arranged for that quarter, in advance, is read better than one applied for in it.
Hospitality and hotel funding questions
Can I get hotel finance to buy a hotel?▼
A trading hotel is bought with a commercial mortgage from a lender that takes leisure premises. Expect a meaningful deposit, since the loan can be set against what the hotel is worth empty as well as with the trade in it. Property-secured lending is for limited companies and LLPs.
Can I get a business loan for a bed and breakfast?▼
Yes, where the business is a limited company or LLP, on the same footing as any small hospitality business, and UK limited companies and LLPs can enquire for unsecured lending. A guest house where the owners live on site is often a mixed-use property, and we do not arrange lending secured on a home.
Is there funding for a hotel refurbishment between seasons?▼
That is the most common hotel enquiry we take. Twelve months of statements, with the closed weeks labelled, is what stops a January application being read as a business in trouble. Enquiring does not affect your credit score. If you apply to a lender, it runs its own credit search, which may be recorded on your file.
How long does a hospitality business need to have traded?▼
Some unsecured lenders will look at a business trading under 12 months, and we arrange finance only once a business has traded for three months. A new owner of a hotel that has traded for 20 years is a different case from a new build, and the previous owner's accounts do a lot of the work.
Start a hospitality finance enquiry
3-minute form. Enquiring does not affect your credit score. If you apply to a lender, it runs its own credit search, which may be recorded on your file. Every application reviewed by a named case handler.
The panel behind this page
The lending on this page goes through our panel: We have access to a range of UK commercial finance lenders through our principal, White Rose Finance Group Limited. We check criteria first and approach only the lenders whose requirements you fit.