How many hotels are for sale in Myrtle Beach? How it compares to Miami or Las Vegas
In recent months, many owners of small, mid-century-built hotels in the Myrtle Beach area have put their properties on the market.
Property owners frequently put hotels on the market, from locations with a few rooms to high rises near the downtown Myrtle Beach oceanfront. One website provides a comparison to other destinations in the United States.
LoopNet is a commercial real estate listing website where agents post properties, often including hotels on the market, although not all hotel properties for sale appear on LoopNet.
As of Feb. 11, 2025, five hotels in Horry County, S.C., are listed on LoopNet — excluding single units or condos. Most properties were near the oceanfront in Myrtle Beach or North Myrtle. Also not listed were properties previously on LoopNet but later removed.
In comparison to another South Carolina city, only one hotel in Charleston was listed for sale as of Feb. 11, 2025, on LoopNet. Other beach destinations like Miami-Dade County, Fla., had 13 hotels listed on LoopNet, excluding locations with single units for sale or planned but yet built properties.
The Myrtle Beach Area Convention and Visitors Bureau states on its website that the Grand Strand’s 425 hotels and other rental locations account for more than 157,000 room units, comparable to Las Vegas. According to LoopNet, seven hotels in Clark County, Nev.— home of Las Vegas— are for sale.
The listings could be part of a growing nationwide trend of small hotels entering the market. Experts say consumer preferences for vacationing for experiences and staying at name-brand locations represent market forces that may lead some vacationers away from mid-century-built hotels.
Meanwhile, rising overhead expenses have recently made running a location independently more difficult.
In an August 2024 interview, Associate Director of the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at the University of South Carolina Scott Smith said that people selling hotels is an established phenomenon as part of firms and business owners buying them as a long-term or short-term investment.
He added that bigger, modern hotels with more amenities could serve as a more attractive destination for travelers. Some properties along the oceanfront also serve as attractive investments for re-development in their own right. The City of Myrtle Beach did place a ban on converting short-term rentals like hotels or motels into long-term rental properties. However, a city spokesperson said the ban doesn’t stop developers from demolishing them and building a new hotel or for long-term use.
“If you’re on the beach and you’re an older hotel, now is probably your chance to get out,” Smith said in an August 2024 interview. “Some developer will come along, buy it up, bulldoze it, and then either turn it
The Myrtle Beach area itself is changing, which could be spurring some of the selling. Neil Flavin is the chief operating officer at the Charlotte, N.C.-based consulting firm HVS, which specializes in the hospitality industry. In an August 2024 interview, Flavin said that many decades-old hotels built near the oceanfront are prime real estate for re-development.
“To make the investment, to get that hotel to be profitable, it may not be there,” Flavin said in an August 2024 interview. “To knock it down, you’ve got a prime piece of real estate, you can build something new, and you can go even higher with more rooms, or you can partner with a developer that wants to do that, then that’s a distinct possibility.”
In a November 2024 email to The Sun News, Interim President and CEO of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce and Convention and Visitors Bureau Tracy Conner said the area’s hotel industry is vital to the local economy and helps the area retain its family-friendly atmosphere.
“The current trends impacting the Myrtle Beach area’s hotel industry can often be attributed to our destination’s success, appeal and resilience following the pandemic,” Conner wrote in November 2024. “The Grand Strand remains an incredibly desirable place to live, work and visit. Some property owners may see this as an opportune time to sell, while new stakeholders are drawn to invest.”
