Skip to content
Enquiry

Insights · 16 minutes

Selling a hotel in Austria: process, valuation, taxes and discretion

A hotel sale in Austria takes six to twelve months and is decided at four points: the valuation out of the earnings, the structure, provincial land transfer law and the order of the conversations.

Thomas Uhlir, MBA · Published on September 23, 2026 · Last updated on September 23, 2026

A hotel in Austria is normally sold confidentially: an assessment out of the earnings, a vetted list of buyers, due diligence, a notarised purchase contract, registration. From the first conversation to the land register a prepared house takes six to twelve months, an asset deal carries 3.5 percent real estate transfer tax and a 1.1 percent registration fee, and on the seller's side 30 percent real estate income tax on the gain.

That is the short answer. The long one begins with an observation from first conversations: the question owners ask first is almost never the one the sale later fails on.

They ask about the price. Sales fail on the real estate transfer tax that nobody included, on a consent from the provincial land transfer authority that a foreign buyer hears about three weeks before the notary appointment, or on a lease whose remaining term reads differently in the sales memorandum than in the 2019 amendment.

The market is large, the number of transactions is not

Austria counted 157.27 million overnight stays and 48.17 million arrivals in the 2025 calendar year, according to Statistik Austria the highest figure since digital records began in 1974. The largest source market remains Germany with 58.55 million overnight stays.

Accommodation capacity in the 2024/25 tourism year came to around 1.20 million beds in 73,174 businesses, again according to Statistik Austria, counted without camping and across all types of accommodation.

Against those figures stands a very small transaction market. CBRE Austria puts hotel investment volume in Austria for 2025 at around 550 million EUR, up 57 percent on the previous year and the third best result in the survey.

Measured against a million beds, 550 million EUR is very little movement. That is exactly where the character of this market comes from. For any individual house there is no market price to read off, only a handful of buyers who arrive at a particular calculation at a particular moment.

The market splits into two worlds that have little to do with each other. In city hotels, above all in Vienna, what counts is year round occupancy, congress business and international operator brands; buyers there are more often institutional and think in yields. In the western tourism provinces what counts is the length of the season, the lift connection, the share of returning guests and the question of who will run the house after a change of owner; buyers there are more often families, operator groups or regional investors.

What that means in detail for city hotels is set out in Selling a hotel in Vienna. The same figure per room means something different in the two worlds. A room with twelve months of operation and a room with five months of opening earn different amounts, which is why any comparison across provincial borders serves only as a rough plausibility check.

CBRE reports a gross initial yield of 5.40 percent for prime hotel properties with a lease in the first quarter of 2025. That number is a reference point for the top end of the market and no yardstick for a four star house with 60 rooms in a valley with one season.

Valuation starts with the result, not with the floor area

A hotel is a business that generates earnings out of an area. Value therefore follows the result that this business earns repeatably, and not the usable floor area.

In a leased house the starting figure is the rent, adjusted for the costs that remain with the owner. In an owner operated house it is the operating result before rent and depreciation, known in the market as GOP, adjusted for a market level managing director's salary and for one off effects. From that result comes a deduction for a reserve for furniture, fixtures and equipment, known in the market as the FF&E reserve.

The adjusted result becomes a value by way of a capitalisation rate. That rate is the actual statement: it contains the level of interest rates, the location, the operating structure, the remaining term of the contract, the standing of the operator and the question of how easily a successor could be found for this house.

The calculation is set out in full in What a hotel is worth. For the sale process one sentence from it is enough: whoever negotiates over a hotel price is almost never negotiating about the property, but about how secure that result is.

A robust assessment works with ranges and sensitivities rather than with a single figure. What happens at five percentage points less occupancy. What happens if the tenant does not extend in four years. Anyone who knows his own range is not taken by surprise by the buyer's calculation. That is the whole purpose of a valuation and feasibility exercise before the process.

The operating structure helps decide what a buyer pays

Lease, management agreement, franchise and own operation produce four different investments in the same house. They differ in who carries the operating risk and who pays for renewal.

Under a lease the acquirer buys a payment. The remaining term of the contract is therefore part of the purchase price: a house with twelve years remaining and a tenant of good standing is valued differently by every bank than the same house with three years remaining.

Under a management agreement the operating result belongs to the owner, the bad one too. With own operation the acquirer buys a profession along with the house. A franchise is a brand and not an operating structure; it changes distribution reach and the fee burden, not the question of who runs the house.

For the price effect this means that the operating structure shifts the capitalisation rate, not the income. Anyone who mixes the two counts the same risk twice. The differences in detail are set out in Lease, management or own operation.

In an asset deal the buyer pays 3.5 percent and 1.1 percent

Where the property itself is sold, the Real Estate Transfer Tax Act 1987 applies. The tax rate on an acquisition for consideration is 3.5 percent, and the basis of assessment is in principle the consideration, but at least the property value, under sections 4 and 7 GrEStG in the version in force.

On top comes the registration fee in the land register. Under tariff item 9 of the Court Fees Act it amounts to 1.1 percent of the value of the ownership right to be registered. Where a mortgage is registered at the same time for the financing, that carries 1.2 percent.

Worked example. On a purchase price of 12 million EUR that is 420,000 EUR of real estate transfer tax and 132,000 EUR of registration fee, together 552,000 EUR, before anyone has talked about drafting the contract, review costs and advice. A buyer who finances with a bank and registers a mortgage adds 144,000 EUR.

Those amounts belong in the buyer's first calculation, not in his last. A purchase price that cannot carry the incidental costs is not a purchase price but a price expectation.

The share deal has been a different calculation since July 2025

For years the answer to real estate transfer tax in Austria was the same as in Germany: you buy the company that holds the property rather than the property itself, and you stay below the threshold. That no longer works in the same way.

The text in force in the RIS carries the change visibly. Section 1 para 2a GrEStG bears the note that the provision was repealed by art 59 no 1, Federal Law Gazette I no 25/2025. Since then section 1 para 3 GrEStG catches changes in the shareholder base of partnerships and corporations holding domestic land from a threshold of 75 percent within seven years. Before, the figures were 95 percent and five years.

New is the concept of the property company, defined by section 4 para 4 GrEStG. Where the land belongs to such a company and the tax is calculated on the common value, the rate under section 7 GrEStG is 3.5 percent of the common value of the land; share transactions previously carried 0.5 percent of the property value. The new version entered into force on 1 July 2025.

Whether a hotel business with its own staff and its own cost of goods falls under that concept is a question for the individual case and belongs to the tax adviser, not to the broker. The point for the sale process is a different one. The structure is not a formality at the end; it changes the price both sides calculate. It therefore belongs before the price negotiation, as described in Asset deal or share deal.

Real estate income tax depends on when you bought

On the seller's side stands the real estate income tax under section 30 EStG. The special tax rate is 30 percent on the capital gain.

For what is known as legacy property, meaning land acquired before 31 March 2002, flat acquisition costs of 86 percent of the sale proceeds may be applied. That leaves around 4.2 percent of the proceeds as tax. Where the land was rezoned after 31 December 1987, only 40 percent flat acquisition costs apply, so around 18 percent of the proceeds.

Since the 2025 budget act there is in addition a rezoning surcharge under section 30 para 6a EStG: 30 percent on the capital gain for land rezoned after 31 December 2024.

For a family business that has been in the same ownership since the nineteen eighties, the difference between 4.2 and 30 percent is the difference between a succession solution and none. It is settled at the beginning, not at the end.

In the west an authority approves before the land register records anything

Land transfer in Austria is a matter for the provinces. Nine provinces, nine acts, and in the western tourism provinces they are strict.

Tyrol runs the Tyrolean Land Transfer Act 1996 with consent requirements for agricultural and forestry land, for building land and for acquisitions by persons without Austrian or equivalent nationality. Salzburg brought the Salzburg Land Transfer Act 2023 into force with effect from 1 March 2023 and brought green land transfer, leisure residences and foreign acquisition together in it.

Under section 28 of its land transfer act, Vorarlberg requires a final consent, a confirmed declaration or a negative certificate before registration in the land register. Without that paper the land register records nothing, however well the purchase contract is drafted.

In practice a sequence follows from this. The nationality and the structure of the buyer belong in the first review, not in the last week. A buyer from a third country acquiring through an Austrian company is a different case from the same buyer acquiring directly, and both cases take time.

The staff transfer with the business, the trade licence does not

Whoever takes over a hotel business takes over the staff. Under section 3 para 1 AVRAG the acquirer enters the existing employment relationships as employer with all rights and obligations.

Section 4 AVRAG obliges him to maintain the collective agreement terms until notice is given or the collective agreement expires; any worsening by individual contract within a year of the transfer is inadmissible. Under section 6 AVRAG transferor and acquirer are jointly liable for employment obligations established before the transfer. Where an employee declines the transfer on the conditions of section 3 para 4 AVRAG, a one month period applies.

The trade licence, by contrast, does not pass. It is tied to the person, and the acquirer registers his own hospitality trade and demonstrates the personal requirements and, where required, the qualification under section 111 GewO 1994.

The operating facility permit follows the opposite logic: it attaches to the facility. Where an approved facility continues in an unchanged type of operation, no fresh approval procedure is needed. Anyone who rebuilds needs one, and that difference occasionally decides the timetable of a buyer with conversion plans.

A sale rarely takes less than six months

The sequence is the same in almost every case; the duration of the individual steps is not.

  1. Classification. Size, category, operating structure, contract with its remaining term, three years of figures, one honest sentence about the condition. Out of that comes a range with reasons. Two to four weeks.
  2. Preparation. Adjusted figures, land register, zoning, permits, contracts, staff, maintenance status. Whatever is missing here costs price later. Four to eight weeks.
  3. Buyer selection. A list of names, not a distribution list. Every candidate is checked for financing capacity and intent before he learns anything.
  4. Approach. First without naming the property, then against a confidentiality and non circumvention agreement with documents, in graduated depth.
  5. Letter of intent. Price, structure, timetable, exclusivity and the conditions on which it ends. Without this step a buyer carries out his review at the seller's expense.
  6. Due diligence. Commercial, legal, tax, technical. Six to twelve weeks, longer for share deals because the past of the company is reviewed as well.
  7. Contract and completion. Purchase contract by a lawyer or notary, certified declaration of conveyance, escrow handling of the purchase price, self assessment of the real estate transfer tax by the drafting lawyer, priority ranking and registration. Six to twelve weeks, depending on the bank and on the land register court.

Anyone who needs a consent under provincial land transfer law adds further weeks to step seven. Anyone who discovers it only there adds months.

What the buyer examines sets the price long before the negotiation

Many sellers see due diligence as an inspection appointment at the end. In fact it is the moment when the price is set for the second time.

The review runs along four strands. Commercial: three to five years of annual accounts, trial balances, monthly figures with occupancy, average room rate and revenue per available room, plus the origin of the guests and the dependence on individual distribution channels. Legal: land register extract with encumbrances, easements, the lease or management agreement with every amendment, supplier and maintenance contracts, pending proceedings. Tax: structure, open tax audits, and for share deals the past of the company. Technical: building fabric, building services, fire safety, energy certificates, maintenance status.

One point recurs regularly here. Owners keep their figures for the bank and for the tax office, not for a buyer. What made sense in both of those directions, a managing director's salary that was never paid, say, or a year without maintenance, shifts the picture as soon as an outsider looks at it.

So the figures are adjusted before anyone asks. A result that the seller has adjusted transparently himself holds up under review. A result that the buyer has to adjust is adjusted downwards.

The second observation concerns pace. Every week that a missing document costs is a week in which the buyer's financing commitment ages and in which somebody in the house notices that something is going on. Complete documents are therefore not tidiness but price protection.

Discretion is a sequence, not secrecy

The most common objection to a confidential sale is that it reaches fewer buyers. For hotels the opposite holds.

The circle of those who can buy a house of medium size in Austria and run it afterwards runs to dozens of addresses, not thousands. Those addresses are known. A listing reaches them too, but it reaches the staff, the house bank, the competitors in town and the tour operators being negotiated with for next year first.

What that sets off is described in full in Why the best hotels never come to market. In short: a public price ages. After six months it becomes the anchor for every negotiation, and it cannot be taken back.

The real advantage lies elsewhere. In a confidential process the timing belongs to the seller. He can break off without anybody noticing, and he can wait a year without an expired listing speaking for him.

Five mistakes that keep coming up in first conversations

The price comes from the square metre price in the neighbourhood. A correct calculation with the wrong reference figure. One owner arrived that way at twice what the earnings could carry.

The incidental costs are missing. The buyer carries 3.5 percent real estate transfer tax and 1.1 percent registration fee, but he offsets them against the purchase price rather than adding them to it.

The structure is discussed last. Since 1 July 2025 the choice between asset deal and share deal in Austria shifts amounts that no price negotiation makes up afterwards.

The investment backlog is not quantified. A house without a room refurbishment in the last three years shows a better result and is worth less. The buyer sees that in the technical review and negotiates it twice.

Too many conversations at once. Anyone who lets five interested parties into the same depth in parallel has five half reviews after two months and no offer.

A hotel does not sell through reach but through preparation and through the selection of those who are asked at all. If you would like to know where your house stands in this calculation: confidentially, in a conversation. How we accompany transactions is set out under Transaction.

Sources

This article reflects the position as at 23 September 2026. It does not replace tax or legal advice. Every individual case needs review by a tax adviser, lawyer or notary.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to sell a hotel in Austria?

From the first assessment to registration in the land register, a prepared house usually takes six to twelve months. Three of those months go to preparation and approaching buyers, two to three to the buyer's review, the rest to the contract, the financing commitment and completion. Missing documents, open building permits or a consent under provincial land transfer law extend the period noticeably.

How high is the real estate transfer tax on a hotel purchase in Austria?

On an acquisition for consideration the real estate transfer tax is 3.5 percent. The basis of assessment is in principle the consideration, meaning the purchase price, but at least the property value under section 4 GrEStG 1987. On top of that comes the land register registration fee of 1.1 percent of the value of the ownership right to be registered. Where a mortgage for the financing is registered at the same time, a further 1.2 percent falls due.

What changed for share deals through the 2025 budget act?

Section 1 para 2a GrEStG was repealed, and section 1 para 3 GrEStG now catches changes in the shareholder base from 75 instead of 95 percent and within seven instead of five years. New is the property company under section 4 para 4 GrEStG: where it owns the land, the rate under section 7 GrEStG is 3.5 percent of the common value. The new version has applied since 1 July 2025.

How high is the real estate income tax on a hotel sale?

The special tax rate for disposals of land is 30 percent on the capital gain. For legacy property, meaning an acquisition before 31 March 2002, flat acquisition costs of 86 percent of the proceeds may be applied, which leaves around 4.2 percent of the sale proceeds as tax. Where the land was rezoned after 31 December 1987, only 40 percent flat acquisition costs apply.

Does a foreign buyer need consent for a hotel in Tyrol or Salzburg?

Land transfer in Austria is a matter for the provinces, not for the federal state. Tyrol, Salzburg and Vorarlberg run their own land transfer acts with consent, declaration or negative certificate procedures. In Vorarlberg, section 28 of the land transfer act requires a final consent, a confirmed declaration or a negative certificate before registration in the land register. Jurisdiction and deadlines are settled before signature, not after.

Do the employees transfer with the hotel when it is sold?

On a transfer of undertaking the acquirer enters the existing employment relationships as employer with all rights and obligations under section 3 AVRAG. The acquirer has to maintain the collective agreement terms under section 4 AVRAG. Transferor and acquirer are jointly liable under section 6 AVRAG for obligations that arose before the transfer. A transfer without staff is legally not a transfer of undertaking at all.

Does the hospitality trade licence pass to the buyer?

No. The trade licence is tied to the person and cannot be transferred, so the acquirer needs his own registration together with proof of the personal requirements and, where required, of the qualification under section 111 GewO 1994. The operating facility permit works the other way round: it attaches to the facility, not to the person, and survives where the type of operation stays unchanged.

What is a hotel in Austria worth?

What counts is the result the business earns sustainably, capitalised at a rate that reflects location, operating structure, the remaining term of the contract and the standing of the operator. CBRE Austria reports a gross initial yield of 5.40 percent for prime hotel properties with a lease in the first quarter of 2025. A price per square metre describes an area, not an income.

Which documents does a buyer need for the review?

Three to five years of annual accounts and trial balances, the operating figures per month, the lease or management agreement with all amendments, the land register extract and encumbrances, zoning and building permits, the operating facility permit, the list of employment contracts, outstanding maintenance and the energy certificates. Whatever is missing is deducted from the price rather than supplied later.

Is a sale without a listing really possible?

It is the rule rather than the exception. The circle of buyers for a house of medium size in Austria runs to dozens of addresses, not thousands, and most of them are known. A confidential process approaches those addresses one after another, against a confidentiality agreement and in graduated depth. The house stays out of the market until an intention exists.

Who pays the commission on a hotel sale in Austria?

That is a matter of negotiation and is agreed in writing before anything starts. The usual arrangement is a success fee that falls due on completion of the purchase contract, borne by one side or shared. What matters is less the rate than the question of what it buys: a listing, or preparation, buyer vetting, negotiation and support through to registration.

When is the right time for a sale?

After a completed financial year with a sound set of figures and before the next large investment decision. Anyone selling while a room refurbishment is pending negotiates twice over the same money, once over the result and once over the investment backlog. In a confidential process the timing belongs to the seller, which is his greatest advantage over an open procedure.

More articles

All articles

Let us
talk

Confidential contact
Login
Sarego Group

Sarego Group is a brand of RED Real Estates Development Bauträger und Immobilien GmbH

QuestionsCareersImprintPrivacyTermsCookies