Market 2025
January 2025
Image: Hotel website gallery
FRANCHISING ADVICE FOR THE INDEPENDENT HOTEL
Having spent over three years post Covid, helping Choice Hotels EMEA (one of the world’s largest hotel chains), with UK franchising, on a retained exclusive basis (now concluded), Nick Barber is well placed for 2025, to work with independent hoteliers are who thinking of adding a franchise and ‘flag’, and for which he can now advise across the market. The photo shows the Clarion Charlecote Pheasant Hotel near Stratford-upon-Avon, which joined Choice in 2023, before launching with the Clarion branding in 2024.
There are pros and cons, costs and benefits in franchising. Without doubt, the no.1 topic of discussion, in Nick’s franchise conversations with hotel owners the length and breadth of the UK, was OTAs – online travel agents - often considered essential for generating bookings for the independent hotel, but expensive. So, a little-known takeaway, for this website franchising piece at the start of 2025, is that the franchise companies can generally offer their franchisees significantly more attractive OTA commission rates, than can be negotiated independently. Which in turn can lead to interesting conversations, comparing the franchise fees with the savings that can potentially be achieved. Add in some ‘key money’, as an effective way of financing the refurbishment of, say, a bedroom wing (which in turn should increase average room rates), and the numbers can look intriguing.
Nick Barber
07796 278720
nick@njbhlp.co.uk