Padi 5 Star Dive center
Belize > Belize > Ambergris Caye
Asking Price: Available on request
Cash Flow: Available on request
Sales Revenue: Available on request
Description:
50% shares for sale!!!! Established turn-key licensed Padi dive center in one of the best diving locations in the world…Ambergris Caye, Belize. Being the only English speaking country in this area of the globe and having been blessed with the second largest barrier reef makes Belize one of the top tourist destinations. Let’s not forget a 2 hour boat ride from the island sits the famous Blue Hole. The dive center is smartly located a 10 minutes walk from the heart of town and a 5 minute boat ride from the barrier reef. BUYING A SCUBA DIVE CENTER - READ THIS The REAL worth of a scuba dive business…Location, location, location! The value of the business is the BUSINESS itself and the lifestyle it will give the owners, and not a sum of its tangible assets. Or indeed of its financial Balance Sheet or P&L. Now, to ignore the financials would be folly of course, but they cannot be the PRIMARY reason to buy any Small/Medium Scuba Business on a tropical island. I also hear a lot about ‘growth potential’ in these discussions and sales negotiations. To re-iterate why we all come to live in Paradise, we did not come here to work like a work-mad entrepreneur, 7 days for years… We come to live “the life”. You do not move to live in Belize to work 7am-6pm, 7 days, 365 days a year in a job! The dive centre will have many contracts and relationships with the resorts and hotels around it that have taken years to establish. This is not do-able in a short period. The real strength of the company comes in intangible assets that really cannot be bought any other way. Seriously REGARDLESS how much money you think you can throw at it… The bottom line of the tropical dive business is the high quality and ease of life of the owners to live, work, dive and enjoy themselves on a tropical island. The best dive businesses have staff that do all the heavy lifting and grunt work, and leave the owners to manage as and when they choose. You do not want to need to be in ‘the office’ daily, regardless of how much fun it is the first few months. It is YOUR business, to supply YOUR lifestyle, Not a job you got in the tropics. (side note if you do just want a job in the tropics, that’s doable of course. To set up a new dive business from scratch is relatively easy if you have a wee pile of cash… Walk into BAUER or COLTRI, buy a compressor, find a boat owner, get a contract to use the boat for scuba diving, buy 20 or 30 scuba cylinders from Cramer Decker, and a few sets of gear from Scubapro. Et voila, instant dive centre? Not really huh? Now you have got yourself a small business with no history, no customer base, no hotel contracts. Then you have to work out all the places to source better (or more cost-effective) gear, work out the best way to maintain/repair the compressors when they need it (oh yes and where to get cylinders fixed in the meantime…) SO for the next 5-10 years you will be working DAMNED hard to establish it, with all the struggles and set-backs of any SME except with the added risk and dangers of doing it in a foreign country. EEEK!. Mostly not what people are looking for in their “dream life on an island”. Face Facts So the analytical way to look at this is to face facts. You will be buying a dive centre in a tropical destination for 2 real reasons: 1. to live a high quality and relatively easy lifestyle in the tropics 2. to dive everyday, or indeed as often as wanted Other reasons, that support the 2 primary ones above are: 1. to have a higher standard of living with the lower cost of living 2. to have more quality time with kids 3. do less housework and laundry 4. live the life, take some risks, and live free in the tropics! Summary So what IS the REAL worth of a scuba dive business… Same with every product, effectively it’s worth whatever the market is willing to pay for it. But do not be fooled by thinking that any Seller is going to be shanghai’d with analysis of their Asset Register, Balance Sheet or P&L for the last year into making the business worth only a couple of thousand dollars for the “2 dive boats” and “16 pink snorkels”. That analysis works when buying a run of mill business in the real world, but just doesn’t add up to the life on offer in the tropics. Location, location, location! Bottom line: the Buyer and Seller need to sit down over a bottle of wine or a cup of coffee outside the dive center (on location) and have an honest face-to-face discussion about the LIFESTYLE that is being sold. Without being on site, it is IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to judge the value of this. (then you can do an analysis of the finances to see if the business can indeed support that lifestyle… another story all together) And then negotiation on the price can begin.
Reason for Selling:
Retirement
Expansion Opportunities:
New and improved 38ft boat ready to take on Blue Hole and/or Turneffe tours with potential to double sales.
Offered Support for the new owner:
3 months training and support to new management
