Choice Hotels International’s $40 million funding program for Comfort Inn and Comfort Suites upgrades will provide as much as $150,000 for some hotels and will extend many of the franchise agreements for owners who partake in the program.
Choice, which announced the program at its annual convention in Los Angeles earlier this week, will evaluate the condition of individual properties and look at their guest-satisfaction scores to determine which owners will receive the funds, said Mike Varner, head of domestic brand management for Comfort Inn and Comfort Suites. The improvements must be performed by September 2014.
The funding will be provided in the form of a promissory note that will be forgiven in five years for hotels that get less than $100,000 in funding, and in 10 years for properties that receive at least $100,000. Franchise agreements set to expire before those deadlines will be extended at no cost to the property owners.
The program is an extension of a plan Choice enacted early last year to accelerate growth in its flagship brands’ revenue per available room. At that time, the company said it would work with hotel owners at upgrading the approximately 1,900 U.S. Comfort Inn and Comfort Suites properties while potentially deflagging as much as 10% of the brand’s lesser-performing hotels.
Choice Hotels CEO Stephen Joyce estimated at the time that a typical 75-room Comfort Inn would require “about a couple hundred thousand dollars” to meet the new standards.
“We knew we were going to want to give the program the turbo boost, “ Varner said. “We know the program’s working, but we want some leaders to take their properties to the next level. Now is the time to do it.”
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