Here is the question-catchphrase of the summer, namely understanding how much business do beach managers do where we go. A little because we don’t understand how expensive cab, deckchair, umbrella, car park etc. are. A little ‘because every summer we are overwhelmed by the desire to say “I quit everything, I work 4 months a year and stop”!
Let’s see a less suggestive idea of how things are: this is how much you earn with a bathhouse to live on income all year round.
The audience of management costs
Like any company, even a beach has a slew of fixed and variable costs. Among the former are those relating to the depreciation of all productive factors with repeated fertility or of multi-year debts underwritten etc.
The bouquet of variable costs is richer, starting with the fee state property, often on the bench of criticism. They are often negligible when compared to the resulting average seasonal turnover.
Then we find income taxes, ordinary VAT 22%, personnel costs ranging from wages to social security charges. Regarding the taxes on waste, insiders say it varies from 2 to 15 thousand euros per year, depending on the size of the area under concession.
The owners of the establishments have two other obligations, that of cleaning the beach and that of rescuing them at sea. In both cases, other variable costs develop (think of the expenses related to a lifeguard) which still weigh on the management.
The time-risk-reward ratio
Then there are other elements that often escape collective reflection. It is true that the bulk of the work and turnover is almost all done in 2 months, but the preparation of the beach begins at least from mid-May. Therefore, in addition to the two canonical months (July and August), two more must be added before and one after for the closing works. Those earnings must therefore also be spread over the three months in which you work and do not collect
The discourse of those structures, actually few, open all year round, is different.
Still, in July and August there are 40 hours of work per week and stop. In those 60 days, a beach owner works at least 10 hours a day, but often it goes beyond that. Finally, there is the remuneration for business risk, which is typical of each type of activity, to be considered.
This is how much you earn with a bathhouse to make a living all year round
So, are we faced with a type of business that is all costs and tasks and no revenue? Absolutely not: insiders often complain that the community underestimates the costs to be incurred throughout the year that go well beyond the state fee. It is true and we have proved it.
But it is equally true that every year the abandonment rate of this type of activity fluctuates between negligible and ridiculous. Indeed there is always the rush to grab new beaches under concession.
Now, if it were a losing type of business, would there be this race for new concessions? Since the beginning of the world, the economic man has been going towards profit, not towards those activities that the market considers to be at a loss.
Nor do any arguments such as “prevailing unemployment lead to the inauguration of unprofitable activities” hold up. First, managing a beach is a free choice and not a moral or civil obligation etc. According to the market, it is always right, and the market says that there is a rush to manage the shores, not to abandon them.
Obviously, profits vary from area to area and from shore to shore, where the usual factors almost always make the difference. In other words, the strength of the demand, the distribution of the market and therefore the number of competitors, the management capacity of the beach. And then the pricing policy, the beauty of the sea and the beach of reference, the family or otherwise of the activity, etc.
Deepening
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