How Much Does a Cobblestone Inn & Suites Franchise Owner Make?

Officially, Item 19 reports hotel room-performance metrics—not annual revenue or owner profit. For 2025, the 55-hotel sample had median RevPAR of $60.45, median ADR of $120.19, median occupancy of 47.78%, and a median room count of 54. These values apply to a combined population of Cobblestone Inn & Suites and Cobblestone Hotel & Suites properties, not to Cobblestone Inn & Suites alone.

The sample included U.S. hotels with at least 45 guestrooms that were open for the entire 24-month period ended December 31, 2025 and supplied detailed data in a consistent format. The 55 hotels represented 45.45% of the combined 121-hotel system. Cobblestone Suites properties were not identified as part of this Item 19 sample. Source: Cobblestone Hotels, LLC, 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 19, pp. 56–58.

The official upper-midscale franchise page shows several floor-plan sizes, including 35, 44, 49, and 54 rooms. That makes 54 rooms a recognizable Cobblestone format, but the model should not be applied unchanged to every Inn & Suites property. The official property portfolio also shows that operating markets and property configurations vary.

The estimate starts with an FDD-derived room-revenue proxy and applies a government accommodation-industry margin range. The central revenue proxy is $1,191,470: 2025 median RevPAR of $60.45 multiplied by 54 rooms and 365 days. This is a calculation, not revenue reported for any particular hotel.

The 80% and 120% revenue spread is an editorial sensitivity assumption because Item 19 does not provide RevPAR quartiles or a complete distribution. The base 13.6% margin comes from the IRS 2022 “Accommodation” category: $20.897 billion of aggregate net income less deficit divided by $153.824 billion of total receipts. The conservative and upside margins are three percentage points below and above that benchmark. The IRS Corporation Income Tax Returns Complete Report describes these data as aggregate corporate statistics organized by industry and other classifications.

What is included in “pre-tax owner earnings” here?

The manager-run figure is intended to represent residual business earnings after ordinary hotel operating expenses and recurring franchise-system charges, before personal income taxes and financing principal. Because the IRS benchmark is an all-in corporate net-income measure, interest and depreciation are already deductions in the benchmark. Financing principal payments are not an income-statement expense and are excluded. Personal federal, state, and local income taxes are also excluded.

The IRS margin is not a cash-flow margin and is not a Cobblestone-specific measure. It spans different accommodation businesses, property sizes, capital structures, ownership forms, and markets. It may include hotels with cost structures that are not comparable to a 54-room Cobblestone property. This broad comparability gap is the central reason for the Limited confidence label.

An owner who personally replaces a paid hotel general manager could have an estimated owner-operator benefit of about $168,000 to $304,000. That larger range is not pure business profit. It combines the manager-run residual earnings with $66,880 of annual labor value, the May 2024 median wage for lodging managers in traveler accommodation reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Item 15 of the 2026 FDD requires the owner or an approved General Manager to actively participate in management and provide direct, on-premises supervision. If the owner does not hire a management company, the selected Manager must have at least five years of hotel general management experience. This operating model does not support describing the investment as automatically passive. Source: 2026 FDD, Item 15, p. 48.

For a 54-room property, five identifiable fixed recurring system charges total approximately $106,403 per year before variable and contingent fees. This derived amount is useful for diligence, but it is not subtracted again from the scenario earnings because the IRS net-income benchmark is already an all-in margin after total deductions. Subtracting the fees a second time would double count expenses.

Other charges can be material but cannot be annualized without property-specific usage. Item 6 includes 15% of revenue derived through theSojern marketing platform, 16% of revenue from reservations transferred by the call center, negotiated payment-processing and travel-agent costs, email-license fees, Rewards usage above the minimum, optional contactless check-in and point-of-sale charges, inspection expenses, and other contingent fees. Source: 2026 FDD, Item 6, pp. 14 and 18–21.

The most important earnings driver is room revenue, which is shaped jointly by RevPAR, room count, and the property’s ability to sustain demand. A small movement in occupancy or ADR can affect a hotel’s annual room revenue every day of the year, while many labor, insurance, utility, and property costs remain partly fixed.

• Brand and cohort mixingItem 19 combines Cobblestone Inn & Suites and Cobblestone Hotel & Suites. It does not publish a separate Inn & Suites result, so the central RevPAR may not describe the exact brand or prototype a buyer is considering.
• Median multiplicationThe $1.191 million revenue proxy multiplies median RevPAR by median room count. Those medians may come from different hotels, so the result is not the revenue of a statistically “median hotel.”
• Ancillary revenueRevPAR captures room revenue, not necessarily bar, meeting-space, retail, or other property revenue. The model does not add unsupported ancillary sales.
• Broad margin benchmarkThe IRS “Accommodation” category is broader than Cobblestone’s upper-midscale, smaller-community hotel model and may contain substantially different properties, operators, and capital structures.
• Capital needs and financingRenovation reserves, major replacements, loan principal, refinancing, and owner-specific debt terms can reduce cash available for distribution even when accounting net income is positive.
• System turnoverItem 20 reports 121 franchised outlets at both the start and end of 2025, with six openings, six terminations, and ten transfers. Those counts do not establish profitability, but they show why buyer interviews should include current, transferred, and former franchisees.

The system had no company-owned outlets in 2025, so there is no franchisor-operated profit-and-loss benchmark to test against the scenario. Source: 2026 FDD, Item 20, pp. 59–63. The FTC Consumer’s Guide to Buying a Franchise explains that Item 19 claims should be evaluated for source, assumptions, limitations, and typicality, and that buyers may request written substantiation. The FTC’s financial performance representation guidance similarly emphasizes evidence rather than unsupported projections.

A buyer should replace the broad assumptions with property-level evidence before treating any scenario as decision-ready. The most useful diligence compares the proposed hotel’s market and operating plan with actual franchisee records rather than relying on a single system median.

• Request Item 19 written substantiation. Reconcile RevPAR, ADR, occupancy, room count, inclusion rules, and any updates after the June 1, 2026 issuance date.
• Ask for monthly hotel-level profit-and-loss statements. Obtain at least 24 months from comparable mature properties, with payroll, utilities, insurance, property taxes, repairs, breakfast, commissions, and all franchise-system charges separately visible.
• Interview owners from the relevant cohort. Compare Inn & Suites properties of similar room count, market size, age, owner role, and demand mix; include transferred and former franchisees listed in Item 20.
• Separate manager-run profit from owner labor. Confirm the actual General Manager payroll package, management-company fee, owner hours, and whether the owner satisfies the experience and supervision requirements.
• Model variable system charges. Use the property’s channel mix to estimate Rewards, call-center, Sojern, travel-agent, payment-processing, and reservation-related costs rather than relying only on the fixed $106,403 illustration.
• Build a cash-flow bridge. Start with operating earnings, then separately deduct debt principal, required capital reserves, major replacements, and owner-specific taxes. Do not confuse accounting net income with spendable cash.