How Much Does a SureStay Hotel Franchise Owner Make?

Officially, it discloses no owner-earnings result. SureStay, Inc. states in Item 19 that it does not make representations about future franchisee financial performance or the past financial performance of franchised or company-owned outlets. The FDD therefore provides no average sales, median sales, occupancy, Average Daily Rate, RevPAR, Gross Operating Profit, EBITDA, Net Income, cash flow, or owner compensation for a SureStay hotel. See SureStay, Inc. 2026 FDD, Item 19, p. 65.

This distinction controls the analysis. The $380,000–$730,000 range is not “reported by the franchisor.” It is a structural estimate for a typical 60-room SureStay format, anchored to the FDD’s room count, management model, recurring fees, and outlet population, then modeled with external U.S. hotel data.

Item 20 shows a fully franchised system, not a performance cohort. The system ended fiscal 2025 with 218 franchised outlets and zero company-owned outlets. During 2025, 23 outlets opened, 12 were terminated, 13 were not renewed, two ceased operations for other reasons, and eight transferred to new owners. Those counts describe system movement; they do not reveal the sales or profitability of continuing hotels. See SureStay, Inc. 2026 FDD, Item 20, pp. 66–78.

The population also requires care: Item 20 says its tables include SureStay Collection hotels operated under older franchise agreements, while later SureStay Collection licensees under a separate disclosure document are excluded. The 218-outlet total therefore should not be treated as a homogeneous sample of current SureStay and SureStay Studio economics.

The result is estimated by combining a 60-room revenue proxy with an EBITDA-style operating-margin proxy. The revenue anchor uses 2025 U.S. hotel RevPAR of $100.02 reported by CoStar/STR. The central margin uses 2024 U.S. hotel EBITDA per available room of $51.88 divided by total revenue per available room of $209.67, producing 24.7436%. These are broad national hotel measures, not SureStay results.

The Conservative and Upside revenue scenarios use 80% and 120% of the central revenue proxy. The margin scenarios use the benchmark margin minus or plus three percentage points. Both spreads are editorial sensitivity assumptions, not FDD-reported quartiles or probabilities.

• Conservative: 80% of central room revenue and a 21.7436% EBITDA-style margin.
• Base: 100% of central room revenue and a 24.7436% EBITDA-style margin.
• Upside: 120% of central room revenue and a 27.7436% EBITDA-style margin.
• Expense treatment: the all-in hotel margin proxy is assumed to include normal labor, manager compensation, franchise-related fees, distribution costs, utilities, insurance, property taxes, and other operating expenses represented in the benchmark. The model does not subtract the FDD fees a second time.
• Excluded from owner earnings: interest, depreciation, amortization, capital expenditures, financing principal, and personal income taxes.

Active owner operation can add labor value, but it does not automatically create additional business profit. Item 15 requires the franchisee to retain direct management control but allows on-premises supervision through a third-party Management Company or a full-time, dedicated General Manager. The owner does not have to supervise the hotel personally. See SureStay, Inc. 2026 FDD, Item 15, pp. 54–55.

The largest disclosed recurring burden is 8% of Gross Rooms Revenue before channel-specific and loyalty charges. Item 6 requires a 4% Monthly Royalty Fee and a 4% Monthly Sales and Marketing Fee. Gross Rooms Revenue is a source-defined room-revenue measure that includes qualifying room rentals, certain rewards redemptions, bundled breakfast amounts, no-show revenue, and credit transactions, less specified rebates and overcharges, while excluding collected taxes. See SureStay, Inc. 2026 FDD, Item 6, pp. 18–28.

The clearly quantified fixed recurring items in the table total approximately $9,388 to $9,868 per year for a 60-room property, before variable booking, distribution, rewards, payment, compliance, and optional-program charges. This subtotal is descriptive, not an additional deduction from the modeled earnings.

No. The published range applies only to the typical 60-room SureStay by Best Western format. The 2026 FDD separately models a typical 100-room SureStay Studio by Best Western, and BWH Hotels describes SureStay Studio as an extended-stay format with kitchenettes and work areas. A simple 100-to-60 room multiplication would ignore different occupancy patterns, Average Daily Rate, length of stay, housekeeping cadence, labor intensity, and distribution mix.

CBRE research reports that lower-priced extended-stay hotels can have materially lower rooms-department labor cost per occupied room than comparable limited-service hotels and can generate higher Gross Operating Profit margins. That evidence supports separating the formats, but it does not provide a current SureStay Studio owner-earnings figure. A Studio estimate would require its own market-specific RevPAR and operating statement.

Debt service can reduce cash available to the owner dollar-for-dollar and may move a seemingly strong operating result close to zero. The scenario is before interest and financing principal because the CoStar/STR proxy is EBITDA-based and the FDD does not provide financing terms. SureStay, Inc. and its affiliates state that they do not offer or guarantee financing. See SureStay, Inc. 2026 FDD, Items 7 and 10, pp. 29–43.

A buyer should therefore compare the hotel’s lender-generated annual debt service—not merely the loan amount—with the manager-run operating range. Personal income taxes are also excluded because entity structure, jurisdiction, deductions, depreciation strategy, and the owner’s other income can materially change the result.

Actual performance can fall below or rise above the range because the FDD supplies no same-brand operating distribution. The most important driver is realized RevPAR, which combines Average Daily Rate and occupancy. The next major variables are labor productivity, third-party booking mix, loyalty charges, utilities, insurance, property taxes, repairs, required brand upgrades, and the cost of professional management.

• Gross Rooms Revenue: the FDD-defined revenue base for royalty and marketing fees; it is not owner income.
• RevPAR: room revenue divided by available room nights; it does not measure operating costs.
• EBITDA-style operating earnings: the model’s proxy for cash-generating operations before interest, income taxes, depreciation, and amortization.
• Owner-operator benefit: residual operating earnings plus the estimated wage value of management labor personally performed by the owner.
• Take-home cash: not estimated here; it depends on debt service, capital spending, entity distributions, reserves, and personal taxes.

A buyer should replace every broad proxy with property-level evidence before underwriting the acquisition or conversion. The FTC explains that Item 19 is the required location for franchisor sales or earnings claims, subject to narrow exceptions, and that buyers should request written substantiation and interview current and former franchisees.

• Confirm that the final FDD and all amendments still contain no later Item 19 financial performance representation.
• Request written substantiation for any sales, occupancy, ADR, RevPAR, profit, or cash-flow statement made during the sales process.
• Obtain at least three years of monthly room revenue, occupancy, ADR, channel mix, payroll, utilities, insurance, property tax, repairs, franchise fees, management fees, and capital expenditures for the specific hotel.
• Interview both current and former franchisees listed in Item 20, separating 60-room SureStay properties from SureStay Studio and legacy SureStay Collection properties.
• Ask manager-run owners what they pay a General Manager or Management Company and whether ownership performs unpaid administrative or sales work.
• Reconcile every Item 6 charge to actual invoices, including rewards, OTA, GDS, digital marketing, PMS, security, rate-shopping, quality, and distribution costs.
• Model annual principal and interest, required lender reserves, property-improvement plans, replacement reserves, and near-term renovation obligations separately.

The strongest defensible range is approximately $380,000 to $730,000 in manager-run, pre-tax EBITDA-style operating earnings for a typical 60-room SureStay, before debt service and capital expenditures. It is a Limited-confidence scenario, not an official SureStay result. An owner who replaces the General Manager may receive approximately $450,000 to $800,000 of owner-operator benefit, but the incremental $67,110 is compensation for labor performed.

The dominant earnings driver is property-level RevPAR; the largest unresolved uncertainty is the absence of any same-brand Item 19 sales or profit data. Before making a decision, a buyer should verify the current Item 19, request written substantiation for every earnings statement, reconstruct the specific hotel’s operating statement, and test the assumptions through interviews with comparable current and former franchisees.