How Much Does a Super 8 Franchise Owner Make?

Item 19 measures hotel room-rate and demand performance, not business profit. For 2025, the FDD reports an average ADR of $80.47, median ADR of $76.09, average Occupancy Rate of 50.6%, median Occupancy Rate of 50.2%, average RevPAR of $40.71, and median RevPAR of $37.68 for Qualified Chain Facilities.

“Qualified Chain Facilities” were U.S. hotels that opened before January 1, 2025, passed their most recent quality-assurance inspection or had not yet received one by December 31, 2025, and achieved a Comparable Social Review Score. The FDD identifies 1,344 U.S. Chain Facilities at year-end, of which 579 qualified for this performance table. All facilities in the Item 19 samples were franchisee-operated; Item 20 reports no company-owned Super 8 outlets in 2025.

The FDD excludes 60 Chain Facilities that left the system during 2025 from the Item 19 results. One of those had been open for less than 12 months. This exclusion matters because closed or departing hotels can have materially different economics from surviving qualified properties.

The model converts FDD RevPAR into annual room revenue and then applies a hotel operating-earnings margin proxy. The conservative scenario uses the FDD median RevPAR. The base scenario uses the FDD average RevPAR. The upside scenario uses 120% of the FDD average RevPAR because Item 19 does not publish quartiles or an upper performance band.

The margin bridge starts with CBRE's 28.3% Gross Operating Profit margin for traditional economy and midscale limited-service hotels. CoStar/STR's 2024 U.S. P&L data show GOPPAR of $73.60, TRevPAR of $209.67, and EBITDA per available room of $51.88. Those figures imply a broad below-GOP ownership-cost spread of about 10.4 percentage points. Subtracting that spread from 28.3% produces a 17.9% base EBITDA-style proxy. The conservative and upside cases move that proxy down and up by three percentage points.

This is a cross-source model rather than a Super 8 profit disclosure. The CBRE segment benchmark is closer to Super 8's operating format than an all-hotel average, while the below-GOP adjustment comes from the broader U.S. hotel population. That mismatch is the principal reason the confidence rating is Limited.

An active owner may capture the economic value of the lodging-manager role, but that value is compensation for work rather than passive business profit. Item 15 says the owner is not required to participate personally in direct operation, although Super 8 recommends owner participation. An absentee owner must hire a qualified individual manager or management company, and the franchisor may require an approved third-party manager in specified circumstances.

The owner-operator scenario adds the BLS 2025 median annual lodging-manager wage of $67,110 for the Accommodation subsector to the manager-run residual. This creates an estimated owner-operator benefit of approximately $201,000-$310,000 for a 65-room facility. The labor-value addition excludes employer payroll taxes, benefits, and any management-company markup, so the real avoided cost may differ.

The largest predictable percentage charge is the 8.5% combination of royalty and System Assessment Fee. Item 6 states a 5.5% royalty and a 3.0% System Assessment Fee, each calculated on Gross Room Revenue. At the 65-room base revenue estimate of $965,845, those two charges equal approximately $82,100 per year.

Additional charges vary with booking and guest mix. Item 6 lists a Loyalty Program Charge of 4.25%-5.5% of amounts on which members earn points or other program currency, a 3.5% Wyndham Connect Plus charge on reservations booked through that service, agency commissions of up to 20% on qualifying booked revenue, and digital pay-for-performance commissions of up to 10% on qualifying reservations. These percentages do not all apply to all room revenue and should not be stacked mechanically.

Technology also has recurring cost. The standard PMS Monthly Support and Service Fee is currently $734-$1,050 per month, depending on room count, while the OPERA Cloud Premium fee is $13.25 per room per month. Variable reservation, channel, customer-care, and compliance charges can add further expense.

Room count changes the modeled dollar result almost proportionally, but it does not guarantee proportional profit. The FDD's initial-investment examples use a 65-room new construction facility and a 100-room conversion facility. Applying the same RevPAR and margin scenarios yields the following per-facility ranges.

A 100-room hotel may gain fixed-cost leverage, but it may also need more housekeeping, front-desk coverage, maintenance, utilities, insurance, and capital reserves. The table is therefore a scenario comparison, not a per-owner forecast. A multi-property owner should not multiply one hotel's result without modeling each property's occupancy, manager structure, renovation cycle, and shared overhead.

The published range is an EBITDA-style operating estimate, not after-tax take-home pay. It is intended to approximate cash-generating capacity after normal hotel operating expenses, manager compensation in the manager-run case, and recurring franchise-related costs represented in the benchmark, but before financing principal and personal income taxes.

• Included: an operating-cost structure consistent with the traditional economy/midscale hotel benchmark, including labor and franchise-related operating expenses at the benchmark level.
• Interest: excluded because the modeled measure is EBITDA-style. Interest expense can materially reduce cash available to the owner.
• Depreciation and amortization: excluded by definition and not treated as cash owner earnings.
• Capital expenditures and renovation reserves: excluded. Hotels require recurring furniture, fixtures, equipment, technology, and property-improvement spending.
• Debt principal: excluded and should be modeled separately using the property's actual loan amount, rate, amortization, and maturity.
• Personal income taxes: excluded because tax outcomes depend on entity structure, deductions, jurisdiction, and owner circumstances.

Verify the proposed property's actual room economics and expense structure rather than relying on a system average. The most decision-useful diligence is a property-specific bridge from occupied rooms to cash available after operating and ownership costs.

• Request the franchisor's written substantiation for the 2026 FDD Item 19 representations, including definitions, source records, and qualification criteria.
• Ask current and former franchisees for trailing 12-month ADR, occupancy, RevPAR, Gross Room Revenue, payroll, utilities, insurance, property taxes, repairs, and replacement-reserve spending.
• Separate direct bookings, Wyndham Rewards bookings, online travel agency bookings, Wyndham Connect Plus bookings, and other channels to calculate the true blended distribution and loyalty cost.
• Confirm whether the property requires an owner-manager, employee general manager, or third-party management company and obtain written compensation proposals.
• Model debt interest, principal, required reserves, and near-term property improvement obligations separately from operating earnings.
• Compare the target hotel's age, room count, quality-assurance status, review score, market demand, and competitive set with the 579 Qualified Chain Facilities used in Item 19.