How Much Does a Fairfield Franchise Owner Make?

Officially, Item 19 measures hotel operating performance rather than owner earnings. For calendar year 2025, the 2026 FDD reports average ADR of $135.01, average occupancy of 67.7%, average RevPAR of $91.44, and an average RevPAR Index of 107.4 for 1,094 STR Included Hotels. These are property-performance statistics, not salary, profit, net income, cash flow, or distributable owner income. Source: 2026 Fairfield by Marriott FDD, Item 19, pp. 112–117.

The applicable population is material. The FDD says 1,191 Fairfield hotels were open in the United States and Canada at December 31, 2025, of which 1,186 were franchised and 1,094 qualified as STR Included Hotels. An STR Included Hotel generally had to report data, have at least two years of operating history, and avoid specified renovation or expansion exclusions. The cohort therefore does not represent every new, disrupted, converted, transferred, or recently renovated property.

The disclosed distribution is wide: RevPAR ranged from $25.34 to $290.66, while median RevPAR was $85.80. The average is higher than the median, so a buyer should not treat $91.44 as a guaranteed or typical result for a particular U.S. market. The FDD also combines U.S. and Canadian hotels; it does not provide a U.S.-only RevPAR table.

The estimate applies a transparent revenue-and-margin model to a representative 95-room hotel. Ninety-five rooms is the midpoint of the FDD’s 80–110-room prototype and closely matches Marriott International’s reported 113,031 Fairfield rooms across 1,191 U.S. and Canadian properties at year-end 2025. The room count is therefore a practical analytical unit, not a claim that every Fairfield has the same capacity.

The revenue spread uses 80%, 100%, and 120% of the FDD’s average RevPAR because Item 19 provides a range and median but no quartile-based earnings distribution. The 80% and 120% points are editorial sensitivity assumptions, not FDD-reported probabilities. The base margin is Apple Hospitality REIT’s 2025 same-store Adjusted Hotel EBITDA margin of 34.4%; the conservative and upside margins are three percentage points below and above that benchmark.

Apple Hospitality’s filing is useful because it reports property-level results for a large rooms-focused portfolio and includes franchise fees and management fees in hotel operating expense. It is still a proxy: the portfolio contains multiple Marriott and Hilton brands, has a higher 2025 ADR than Fairfield’s Item 19 cohort, and its Adjusted Hotel EBITDA excludes interest, income taxes, depreciation, capital expenditures, and corporate-level general and administrative expense.

What is included and excluded from the estimate?

The scenario is closest to a property-level operating cash-flow measure, not after-tax take-home pay. The benchmark margin reflects normal hotel operating expenses, including franchise and management fees, but excludes financing interest and principal, depreciation, capital spending, and corporate-level overhead. Because the model uses room revenue only, it does not add unverified food-and-beverage or other revenue.

• Included through the margin proxy: hotel payroll and operating costs, sales and marketing, utilities, repairs and maintenance, franchise fees, management fees, property taxes, insurance, and other property-level expenses.
• Excluded: interest, debt principal, depreciation and amortization, FF&E replacement spending, major renovations, owner-level corporate overhead, and personal income taxes.
• Not an after-tax estimate: entity structure, state and local tax rules, deductions, depreciation, and the owner’s personal circumstances determine tax outcomes.
• No double charge: the model does not subtract Fairfield fees again from the benchmark margin because the proxy already reflects franchise and management costs at portfolio level.

Active ownership may add roughly $106,000 of management value in the base scenario, but it does not eliminate the need for qualified on-property management. Item 15 says a franchisee must operate the hotel or retain an approved management company, and a trained general manager must directly supervise the hotel on premises and devote full time to the operation. Source: 2026 Fairfield by Marriott FDD, Item 15, pp. 101–102.

The manager-run base scenario already includes a management-fee expense through the Apple Hospitality margin. Apple reported $47.057 million of 2025 management fees on $1.412 billion of revenue, a 3.33% portfolio ratio. Adding that ratio back to the 95-room base revenue produces an estimated owner-managed benefit of about $1.20 million. The approximately $106,000 difference is labor and management-enterprise value, not passive profit, and it assumes Marriott accepts the operating structure and the owner can perform functions otherwise purchased from a management company.

The 2026 FDD establishes a core recurring burden of 9.35% of gross room sales, plus $7,000 per year and $135 per guestroom per year. At the base 95-room room-revenue figure, those core charges total approximately $316,000, or 9.98% of modeled room revenue. That subtotal is not the complete fee burden.

Source: 2026 Fairfield by Marriott FDD, Item 6, pp. 32–58. The calculation uses $3,170,682 of modeled gross room revenue. Other Item 6 charges can depend on reservations, loyalty activity, credit-card volume, revenue-management services, technology, sales programs, compliance status, and selected services.

Confidence is limited because same-brand Item 19 revenue evidence must be combined with a multi-brand property-level margin proxy. The FDD’s RevPAR is directly relevant to Fairfield, but it combines the United States and Canada and excludes certain newer or disrupted hotels. The margin benchmark is current and detailed, yet it is not a Fairfield-only franchised-unit result.

Geographic uncertainty

The FDD does not publish a U.S.-only ADR, occupancy, or RevPAR result, so Canadian results cannot be separated from the official cohort.

Population uncertainty

STR Included Hotels generally had at least two years of operating history and met reporting and renovation conditions. A new development may perform differently during ramp-up.

Margin uncertainty

Apple Hospitality’s 34.4% same-store Adjusted Hotel EBITDA margin covers a large rooms-focused portfolio, not a controlled sample of Fairfield franchised hotels.

Capital uncertainty

The estimate excludes FF&E replacement spending, major renovation, property improvement plan work, and other capital requirements that reduce distributable cash.

Financing uncertainty

The estimate is before interest and debt principal. Given the FDD’s eight-figure new-build investment ranges, financing structure can materially change cash available to equity owners.

A buyer should replace every proxy with property-specific evidence before treating the range as usable underwriting. The Federal Trade Commission explains that Item 19 claims must have a reasonable factual basis and that prospective franchisees may request written substantiation. Item 20 provides franchisee and system information that can support targeted interviews.

• Request the written substantiation for 2025 Item 19 results and ask whether a U.S.-only, 80–110-room, suburban, mature-hotel subset is available.
• Obtain complete profit-and-loss statements from comparable Fairfield franchisees, including payroll, breakfast, utilities, insurance, property taxes, franchise charges, management fees, and reserve contributions.
• Confirm whether the owner will operate the hotel, employ the general manager, or use an approved management company, and obtain the proposed management agreement and all incentive-fee terms.
• Reconcile every Item 6 charge to expected room revenue, qualifying loyalty revenue, reservation mix, technology configuration, and required Marriott programs.
• Build a separate schedule for interest, debt principal, FF&E reserves, renovations, property improvement plan obligations, and owner-level overhead.
• Interview current and former franchisees identified through Item 20 about ramp-up, labor intensity, management-company performance, capital spending, and cash distributions.