The thing that goes wrong is almost never the building.

Last week I published a deal sheet with no names on it. Eight hotels for sale, eight mandates to buy, four countries, not one owner identified.

Thank you to everyone who came back to me on it. One of those conversations, with someone I had never met, is now heading toward a real transaction.

A stranger trusted a post that named nothing. Here is why.

A file leaves an owner's desk. It goes to an agent, then a contact, then a buyer's adviser, then on again. By the time it reaches anyone who can sign, four people have handled it and none has stood in the building.

Every link adds a fee. No link adds judgement.

So we built the shortest chain we could. Two people, reading opposite ends of the same asset.

I read the business. Twenty years on the floor, latterly Group Head of Wine at Gordon Ramsay Restaurants. Whether the restaurant is carrying the property or quietly bleeding it.

Aleš Machač reads the building. Structure, plant, the mechanics of it. Whether a capex figure survives contact with the basement.

Neither of us reads only the file. It is why we transact in 45 to 60 days against an industry standard north of 90.

So, owners, a question.

The last time someone approached you about your hotel, did they tell you one single thing about your own business that you did not already know?

If not, you were not being advised. You were being forwarded.