For an illustrative 250-room, mature U.S. Crowne Plaza hotel, the strongest defensible estimate is roughly $2.1 million to $4.2 million per year, with a base scenario near $3.0 million. This is a pre-tax, pre-debt operating cash-flow proxy after an illustrative 5% capital reserve—not an official owner-income disclosure or guaranteed distribution.
This range is an independent analytical scenario, not an Item 19 financial performance representation by Holiday Hospitality Franchising, LLC. It combines identified Crowne Plaza FDD facts with separately identified CoStar/STR hotel benchmarks and editorial scenario assumptions. Actual results can differ materially because of location, hotel format, room count, occupancy, room rate, food-and-beverage mix, labor, property taxes, insurance, management structure, financing, capital needs, owner involvement, and execution.
Legal franchisor: Holiday Hospitality Franchising, LLC. Document: Crowne Plaza 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document, issued April 2, 2026. Item 19: 2025 occupancy, Average Daily Room Rate and Revenue Per Available Room for 72 U.S. Mature Hotels; no total sales, EBITDA, net income, owner compensation, or distributable cash was disclosed. Model: Mode C, using the FDD’s median RevPAR, the FDD’s 250-room illustration, 2024 U.S. CoStar/STR revenue and EBITDA metrics, and a conditional 5% capital reserve. Checked: July 16, 2026.
What does Crowne Plaza Item 19 actually report?
The official disclosure reports hotel room-performance metrics, not owner earnings. For fiscal 2025, the 72 Mature Hotels produced average occupancy of 58.9%, average ADR of $146.62, and average RevPAR of $86.35. The corresponding medians were 59.0%, $128.50, and $80.63. These figures are official historical results for the defined cohort, but none is business profit or owner take-home pay.
A “Mature Hotel” had been open for at least two full years by December 31, 2025, was licensed or owned and/or managed by Holiday or an affiliate, and was not in default. Item 20 reported 79 licensed U.S. hotels at year-end 2025, no company-owned hotels, and two affiliate-managed hotels. The Item 19 population therefore is not a clean owner-operated-only or manager-run-only cohort. Crowne Plaza 2026 FDD, Item 19, pp. 93–97; Item 20, pp. 97–102.
RevPAR equals room revenue divided by available room nights. It excludes food-and-beverage and other hotel revenue, and it says nothing directly about payroll, occupancy costs, insurance, property taxes, franchise fees, management fees, interest, capital expenditures, or owner distributions. The CoStar explanation of RevPAR and TRevPAR makes the same distinction.
How broad was the official sample?
The sample covered 72 of the 79 U.S. Crowne Plaza hotels existing at December 31, 2025, or 91.1%. That is broad system coverage, but the maturity and default screens matter. Newly opened hotels, hotels open for less than two full years, and hotels in default were outside the disclosed Mature Hotel cohort. The FDD also says the submitted data were unaudited and not independently verified.
| Official 2025 metric | Average | Median | Disclosed range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Occupancy | 58.9% | 59.0% | 33.0%–93.7% |
| Average Daily Room Rate | $146.62 | $128.50 | $82.52–$281.36 |
| Revenue Per Available Room | $86.35 | $80.63 | $29.73–$263.57 |
| Enterprise Contribution | 80.6% | 83.1% | 29.8%–97.6% |
How is the $2.1 million to $4.2 million range calculated?
The range is estimated, not reported. The model starts with the official median RevPAR of $80.63 because a median is less sensitive than an average to unusually high-performing hotels. It then uses the FDD’s 250-room illustration, converts room revenue to a total-revenue proxy with U.S. CoStar/STR data, applies an EBITDA margin sensitivity, and deducts a full 5% capital reserve as a conservative interpretation of the FDD’s “up to 5% of Gross Revenue” requirement when imposed.
The 80%, 100%, and 120% RevPAR anchors are editorial scenario assumptions, not FDD quartiles or probabilities. The 24.7% base EBITDA margin comes from 2024 U.S. CoStar/STR EBITDA PAR of $51.88 divided by TRevPAR of $209.67; the conservative and upside margins are three percentage points below and above that benchmark. The 2024 U.S. hotel P&L release, 2024 U.S. top-line release, and STR Benchmark glossary provide the source definitions.
| Model component | Conservative | Base | Upside |
|---|---|---|---|
| RevPAR assumption | $64.50 | $80.63 | $96.76 |
| Estimated room revenue | $5.89M | $7.36M | $8.83M |
| Estimated total hotel revenue | $12.35M | $15.44M | $18.52M |
| EBITDA margin assumption | 21.7% | 24.7% | 27.7% |
| Hotel EBITDA proxy | $2.69M | $3.82M | $5.14M |
| Illustrative 5% capital reserve | ($0.62M) | ($0.77M) | ($0.93M) |
| Estimated pre-tax owner earnings | $2.07M | $3.05M | $4.21M |
The total-revenue multiplier combines two 2024 U.S. CoStar/STR aggregates: national RevPAR and P&L-sample TRevPAR. The reporting samples may not be identical, and a full-service Crowne Plaza can have a different food-and-beverage, meeting, parking, and other-revenue mix. This comparability gap is the main reason the evidence confidence is Limited.
How do Crowne Plaza franchise fees affect the estimate?
The FDD’s fixed headline burden is 5% of Gross Rooms Revenue for royalty plus 3% of Gross Rooms Revenue for the Services Contribution. Additional charges include loyalty-program contributions, booking and distribution charges, a $3-per-room monthly Crowne Plaza Hotel Marketing Association fee, a $17.75-per-room monthly Technology Services Fee, property-management-system charges, training, and other program fees whose bases vary.
The scenario does not subtract the 8% headline fees a second time. The STR P&L reporting guidelines place franchise royalty, marketing, loyalty, and related operating charges inside hotel expense lines. Applying the all-in EBITDA benchmark and then deducting the same fees again would double count them. Crowne Plaza 2026 FDD, Item 6, pp. 28–52.
- Included through the benchmark: ordinary hotel operating expenses, including labor and the franchise-fee categories represented in STR’s reporting framework.
- Deducted separately: an illustrative 5% capital reserve, because EBITDA does not represent replacement capital expenditure.
- Excluded: cash interest, financing principal, personal income taxes, depreciation, amortization, and exceptional property-level capital projects.
- Not assumed: that every hotel pays the same channel, loyalty, technology, management-company, or local-marketing cost.
Does active owner involvement increase Crowne Plaza earnings?
Active involvement may improve oversight, but the FDD does not support treating Crowne Plaza as a lightly staffed owner-operator business. Item 15 requires either an approved management company or an approved owner to exercise direct management control. Regardless of the structure, the General Manager and Director of Sales must work exclusively for the hotel, and a multi-hotel owner must have a separate qualified General Manager for each hotel.
For that reason, the headline scenarios include no automatic manager-salary add-back. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics accommodation data show a 2025 mean annual wage of $77,120 for lodging managers, but that broad occupation average may materially understate the compensation required for an experienced General Manager of a 250-room full-service hotel. It is useful only as a labor-value reference.
Even if an owner is approved to perform a management role, the economic benefit is compensation for labor, not passive income. The buyer should obtain written confirmation of which executive positions can be combined, the required experience, and whether a management company or separate General Manager will still be required.
What could move actual owner earnings outside the range?
The largest earnings driver is the hotel’s revenue per available room and its ability to generate profitable non-room revenue. The largest unresolved uncertainty is financing: the FDD does not provide a standard owner loan structure, while a hotel with the disclosed investment scale can carry substantial cash interest and principal payments. Two properties with identical EBITDA can therefore distribute very different amounts to their owners.
- Market and demand mix: business travel, group meetings, airport or central-business-district proximity, leisure demand, seasonality, and competitive supply can materially change occupancy and ADR.
- Food, beverage, and meeting economics: Crowne Plaza is presented on the official IHG Development page as a full-service premium brand with meetings and events. Those departments can add revenue while also adding payroll, food cost, equipment, and operating complexity.
- Property taxes, insurance, and labor: these costs vary sharply by jurisdiction, union status, building condition, and local wage market.
- Management agreement: base fees, incentive fees, centralized services, and owner-level asset-management costs are property-specific and are not disclosed as a uniform Item 19 expense.
- Capital plan: the FDD permits a capital reserve up to 5% of Gross Revenue if required; renovations or property-improvement plans can exceed that annual reserve.
- Debt structure: leverage, interest rate, amortization, maturity, covenants, and construction or renovation financing can dominate cash distributions without changing hotel EBITDA.
What should a buyer verify before relying on an earnings estimate?
The estimate should be replaced with property-specific underwriting before a purchase or development decision. The Federal Trade Commission notes that gross-sales figures do not reveal costs or profits and advises buyers to request written substantiation for Item 19 claims and compare them with franchisee experience. See the FTC Consumer’s Guide to Buying a Franchise.
- Request Item 19 written substantiation, including the hotel list, calculation methodology, available-room treatment, and any supplemental financial performance representation for the proposed location.
- Obtain trailing 36-month rooms, food-and-beverage, meeting, parking, and other-department revenue for a comparable hotel—not only ADR, occupancy, and RevPAR.
- Ask existing and former franchisees for payroll, management fees, franchise and distribution charges, property tax, insurance, utilities, repair and maintenance, and replacement-reserve experience.
- Confirm whether the target hotel is a New Development, Conversion, Change of Ownership, or Re-Licensing and identify all property-improvement and technology obligations.
- Model cash interest and principal under the actual financing proposal separately from hotel EBITDA and separately from personal income taxes.
- Confirm in writing whether the owner may manage the hotel, which executive roles remain mandatory, and whether one General Manager may serve any other property.
What is the most defensible Crowne Plaza owner-earnings answer?
The strongest defensible range is approximately $2.1 million to $4.2 million per year for an illustrative 250-room, mature U.S. hotel, with a base scenario around $3.0 million. It is a scenario-based pre-tax operating cash-flow proxy after a modeled 5% capital reserve, not an official Item 19 owner-income figure. It excludes cash interest, financing principal, personal taxes, and extraordinary capital spending, so actual distributions may be materially lower.
RevPAR and operating margin are the principal earnings drivers. Financing and property-specific non-room economics are the largest unresolved uncertainties. A buyer should verify the Item 19 substantiation, obtain a property-level profit-and-loss statement, model the actual debt package, and test the result against interviews with current and former franchisees.
Evidence confidence: Limited. The current FDD directly supports the U.S. cohort, RevPAR, fee structure, room-count illustration, management requirements, and capital-reserve condition; the owner-earnings range relies materially on external U.S. hotel benchmarks and explicit scenario assumptions.