For an illustrative 100-room, manager-run U.S. Travelodge hotel, this is the defensible scenario range for pre-tax accounting earnings. The base scenario is about $120,000. An active owner who personally replaces a qualified lodging manager could have an estimated owner-operator benefit of roughly $126,000–$265,000, but that higher figure includes compensation for the owner’s labor and is not passive business profit.
This earnings range is an independent analytical scenario, not an Item 19 financial performance representation by Travelodge Hotels, Inc. It combines 2025 Travelodge Item 19 RevPAR data and recurring-fee facts with a separately identified IRS accommodation-industry margin and a BLS manager-wage benchmark. Actual results can differ materially with room count, location, average daily rate, occupancy, labor, utilities, insurance, property taxes, distribution-channel mix, financing, owner involvement, property condition, and execution.
Travelodge Hotels, Inc. issued its U.S. Franchise Disclosure Document on March 31, 2026. Item 19 reports 2025 Average Daily Room Rate, Occupancy Rate, RevPAR, RevPAR Index, Central Reservation System Contribution, and Wyndham Rewards Contribution. It does not report franchisee operating profit, EBITDA, net income, cash flow, owner salary, or distributions.
Median Travelodge RevPAR annualized for 100 rooms, multiplied by the 7.9% IRS net-income benchmark.
Room revenue per available room per day for 163 Qualified Chain Facilities.
IRS 2017 total receipts less total deductions divided by total receipts for accommodation S corporations.
Royalty, marketing, basic reservation fee, and the annual daily-room charge for 100 rooms.
About 51.4% of U.S. Travelodge facilities at December 31, 2025.
BLS 2024 median annual wage for lodging managers in traveler accommodation.
What does Travelodge Item 19 actually measure?
Item 19 measures room-rate and occupancy performance, not owner earnings. For January 1 through December 31, 2025, the 163 Qualified Chain Facilities reported median RevPAR of $41.62 and average RevPAR of $44.00. RevPAR is gross room revenue divided by available rooms; it is revenue before hotel operating expenses.
The Qualified Chain Facilities had opened before January 1, 2025 and met a social-review threshold: at least 10 aggregated reviews during 2025 and an average score of at least 3.5 out of 5. All hotels in the Item 19 performance population were operated by franchisees.
| Official 2025 Item 19 measure | Average | Median | Met or exceeded average |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average Daily Room Rate | $90.87 | $84.96 | 70 of 163 (42.9%) |
| Occupancy Rate | 48.4% | 48.1% | 78 of 163 (47.9%) |
| RevPAR | $44.00 | $41.62 | 71 of 163 (43.6%) |
| RevPAR Index versus the U.S. economy chain scale | 116.3% | 110.0% | 71 of 163 (43.6%) |
Annualizing the official median RevPAR for an illustrative 100-room hotel gives $1,519,130 of room revenue: $41.62 × 100 rooms × 365 days. The same calculation using average RevPAR gives $1,606,000. Neither figure includes labor, cleaning supplies, utilities, repairs, insurance, property taxes, royalties, reservation charges, technology, interest, depreciation, or capital expenditures.
Item 19 also reports that all 317 U.S. facilities at December 31, 2025 had average Central Reservation System Contribution of 71.1% and average Wyndham Rewards Contribution of 43.2%. These are booking-channel contribution measures, not margins. The official Travelodge by Wyndham franchise page publicly identifies the brand as a U.S. franchised value-hotel opportunity and cites the March 31, 2026 FDD performance data.
How is the annual owner-earnings range calculated?
The model applies an official accommodation-industry net-income margin to Travelodge’s official median RevPAR. This is estimated, not franchisor-reported. The central revenue anchor is the $41.62 median RevPAR because a median is less affected by unusually high-performing hotels than an average.
What assumptions define the three scenarios?
The Conservative and Upside revenue anchors are 80% and 120% of the median RevPAR. That spread is an editorial sensitivity, not an Item 19 quartile or probability forecast. The central 7.9% margin comes from the IRS Statistics of Income 2017 table for S corporations classified as Accommodation: $26.605 billion of total receipts less $24.512 billion of total deductions equals $2.094 billion, or 7.87% of receipts. The Conservative and Upside margins are three percentage points below and above that benchmark.
- Revenue: RevPAR × 100 available rooms × 365 days. Ancillary food, vending, or other non-room revenue is not added.
- Manager-run earnings: modeled room revenue × scenario net-income margin, before the owner’s personal income tax and before financing principal payments.
- Interest and depreciation: included within the IRS total-deduction benchmark; therefore the scenario is an accounting-earnings proxy, not EBITDA or operating cash flow.
- Capital expenditures: not deducted as annual cash spending. Depreciation is included in the benchmark, but actual renovation and furniture-replacement cash needs can differ sharply.
- Rounding: full-precision inputs are used first; displayed earnings are rounded to the nearest $1,000.
| Scenario | RevPAR anchor | 100-room annual revenue | Net margin | Manager-run earnings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | $33.30 | $1,215,304 | 4.9% | $59,000 |
| Base | $41.62 | $1,519,130 | 7.9% | $120,000 |
| Upside | $49.94 | $1,822,956 | 10.9% | $198,000 |
Pre-tax accounting-earnings proxy for an illustrative 100-room U.S. hotel.
Interpretation: Revenue and margin move together in this sensitivity model, so the range is wider than changing either input alone. Sources: 2026 Travelodge FDD, Item 19, pp. 81–83; IRS S corporation statistics and the 2017 major-industry income statement table.
The 7.9% margin is the closest official expense-inclusive benchmark located, but it is old and broad. It covers accommodation S corporations rather than Travelodge franchisees specifically, and the IRS table does not isolate value hotels, room count, franchise affiliation, market, maturity, or owner role. A percentage margin is less sensitive to inflation than a dollar benchmark, but operating economics have changed since 2017.
How do Travelodge fees affect the earnings estimate?
The 2026 FDD establishes a base recurring charge of 8.5% of Gross Room Revenues plus a daily guest-room charge. This official fee formula materially affects hotel economics, but it is not the full cost of affiliation because channel-specific, loyalty, technology, training, and conditional charges may also apply.
- Royalty Fee
- 5.0% of Gross Room Revenues.
- Marketing Contribution
- 2.0% of Gross Room Revenues, included in the System Assessment Fee.
- Basic Reservation Fee
- 1.5% of Gross Room Revenues, included in the System Assessment Fee.
- Daily Guest Room Charge
- $0.10 per room per day for the first 100 rooms; $0.05 for each additional room.
- Wyndham Connect Plus
- 3.5% of Gross Room Revenues for each reservation booked through that required service.
- Wyndham Rewards charge
- 4.25%–5.5% of amounts on which members earn points or other program currency.
At the modeled $1,519,130 of annual room revenue, the base 8.5% percentage charges equal $129,126. Adding the $3,650 annual daily-room charge for 100 rooms produces $132,776 before Wyndham Connect Plus booking charges, Wyndham Rewards charges, agency commissions, reservation-channel fees, property-management-system fees, and other applicable obligations.
The scenario does not subtract $132,776 again after applying the IRS margin. The IRS net-income benchmark is already calculated after total deductions, so subtracting Travelodge fees separately would double count expenses. The limitation is that the IRS accommodation population contains businesses with different or no franchise fees; therefore, the 7.9% margin may not represent a Travelodge hotel’s exact fee mix.
Gross Room Revenues under the FDD are not identical to every dollar collected by the property. The definition generally includes guest-room rental revenue and specified room-related amounts, while excluding separately charged food and beverage, certain telephone and entertainment charges, vending receipts, and sales, occupancy, and use taxes. A buyer’s financial model should map each revenue category to the precise fee base instead of applying every percentage to total hotel receipts.
How does owner involvement change annual earnings?
An owner who performs the general-manager role may capture labor value in addition to residual business earnings. This is an estimated owner-operator benefit, not pure profit. Item 15 says the owner does not have to manage personally, although Travelodge Hotels, Inc. recommends personal participation. A non-managing owner must hire a qualified individual manager or management company, and the franchisor may require an approved third-party manager in specified circumstances.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics lodging-manager profile reports a May 2024 median annual wage of $66,880 for lodging managers in traveler accommodation. Adding that wage to the manager-run residual produces the owner-operator scenarios below.
The distance between markers is the $66,880 BLS wage value assigned to the owner’s management labor.
Interpretation: The owner-operated increment compensates the owner for performing management work. It is not a passive return. The BLS wage excludes self-employed workers and does not include employer payroll taxes, benefits, bonuses, or a management-company markup, so the actual avoided cost may be higher or lower. Sources: 2026 Travelodge FDD, Item 15, pp. 74–75; BLS lodging-manager wage data.
The base owner-operator benefit of about $186,000 consists of approximately $120,000 of modeled accounting earnings plus $66,880 of labor value. It should not be compared directly with a passive investment return, because the owner may work full time, remain on call, and assume responsibility for staffing, guest service, budgeting, quality assurance, and operating compliance.
What could move actual Travelodge owner earnings outside the range?
The largest unresolved uncertainty is the absence of same-brand expense and profit data. Item 19 provides useful revenue-performance measures, but it does not show payroll, utilities, property taxes, insurance, repairs, franchise charges by channel, debt, depreciation, capital expenditures, or owner compensation for the reporting hotels.
Which Item 19 limitations matter most?
The official performance sample covers 163 of 317 U.S. facilities, or 51.4%. It excludes facilities that did not meet the review threshold and hotels that left the system during 2025. Item 19 states that 29 facilities left the system during the year, including three that had been in the system for less than 12 months. Item 20 shows U.S. franchised outlets declining from 328 at the start of 2025 to 317 at year-end. These facts do not prove that departing hotels lost money, but they limit how broadly the Qualified Chain Facilities can represent the entire system.
What should a buyer verify before relying on the estimate?
- Request the written substantiation for Item 19 and confirm how room outages, partial-year reporting, renovations, and missing monthly reports were handled.
- Obtain trailing 24- to 36-month profit-and-loss statements for a comparable existing hotel, with ADR, occupancy, RevPAR, room count, and market segmentation.
- Reconcile every FDD Item 6 charge: Royalty, Marketing Contribution, Basic Reservation Fee, Daily Guest Room Charge, Wyndham Connect Plus, Wyndham Rewards, agency commissions, booking fees, technology, and training.
- Separate general-manager wages, officer compensation, owner draws, distributions, retained earnings, interest, depreciation, debt principal, and property-improvement spending.
- Model local payroll rates, utilities, insurance, real estate taxes, repair history, and required furniture, fixture, equipment, and property-improvement reserves.
- Interview current and former franchisees listed in Item 20 about manager structure, owner hours, maintenance burden, channel costs, and cash retained after debt service.
This article does not present an illustrative loan payment because financed amount, collateral, rate, amortization, and property value are buyer-specific. The IRS benchmark includes industry-reported interest expense, but it does not model a new buyer’s financing principal. A highly leveraged acquisition can leave substantially less cash available than the accounting-earnings figures shown here.
What is the strongest defensible Travelodge earnings range?
The strongest defensible range is approximately $59,000 to $198,000 per year for a manager-run, illustrative 100-room hotel, with a base scenario near $120,000. It is a scenario-based pre-tax accounting-earnings proxy, not an official Travelodge profit disclosure. An active owner who replaces a paid lodging manager may have an estimated owner-operator benefit of about $126,000 to $265,000, but the incremental amount represents labor performed by the owner.
The most important earnings driver is RevPAR, because small changes in occupancy and Average Daily Room Rate flow through every available room and interact with largely fixed property costs. The largest unresolved uncertainty is the lack of current, same-brand operating-expense and owner-compensation data. A buyer should verify the Item 19 substantiation, obtain property-level financial statements, reconcile all recurring and channel fees, and compare the model with interviews of current and former franchisees.
Personal income taxes are not estimated. Tax results depend on entity structure, jurisdiction, deductions, owner compensation, and individual circumstances.