Hotel Software in the US 2026: The Franchise Owner Is the Buyer, and Most Hotels Still Run Without KPIs

The US hotel market looks like the easy version of hotel tech. It is one country, one language, one currency, and it has big brands with public numbers. A founder building a revenue tool, a guest app or a back-office product for hotels tends to picture a sales call with Marriott or Hilton.

In practice, that call mostly goes to someone else. The data in the Atlas cell for US hotels shows a market that is large and growing in room count. Most of its rooms are owned by franchisees, though, and a large share of those businesses still run without basic management metrics. That combination decides who you sell to, what you can charge and which product actually gets adopted.

The market is big, and the brand is not the operator

Start with size. The Census Bureau's Quarterly Services Survey puts revenue of US accommodation businesses (NAICS 721, employer firms subject to federal income tax) at $92,714 million in Q2 2026, $83,356 million in Q1 2026, $84,917 million in Q4 2025 and $91,774 million in Q3 2025 (US Census Bureau via FRED, 2025–2026). Summed, US accommodation revenue is roughly $353 billion over four quarters (our calculation from the four quarterly figures). The US accommodation sector employed 1,197 thousand people in 2025 (BLS, Current Population Survey, 2025).

Now look at who owns the rooms. Hilton reported 863,219 hotel rooms in operation in the US, of which 784,690 are franchised or licensed (Hilton Q2 2026 earnings release, June 2026), so about 91% of Hilton's US rooms are run by someone other than Hilton (our calculation). For Hyatt it is 101,798 franchised rooms out of 171,320 in the US, about 59% (Hyatt, June 2026; our calculation). Choice Hotels has 499,226 US rooms in its system, and Wyndham 216,600 economy and 284,500 midscale-and-above US rooms (company filings, June 2026). Both run a franchise-led model.

For a software founder this is the most important number in the cell. The brand sets standards and usually supplies the core reservation and loyalty systems. Spending on everything else, such as labour scheduling, maintenance, energy, upsell and local marketing, is decided at the level of the ownership group or the individual property. Your buyer is usually a franchisee who owns one to a few dozen hotels, not a corporate procurement team. The sales cycle, the price point and the integration requirements follow from that.

What a room earns, and where it is growing

Brand filings show how much revenue there is per room. Marriott reports the US together with Canada. Its comparable systemwide hotels in that US region earned RevPAR of $150.10 at an average daily rate of $202.82 in Q2 2026 (Marriott, 8-K, Q2 2026). Hilton's comparable US hotels ran at 77.3% occupancy, $180.16 ADR and $139.28 RevPAR in the same quarter (Hilton, Q2 2026).

The spread between segments matters more than the average. Marriott's US Luxury composite earned $335.56 RevPAR, up 9.1% on a year earlier, while its US Select composite earned $125.86, up 4.4% (Marriott, Q2 2026). At Wyndham, US Upscale and Above RevPAR fell 5%, and its US economy room count declined 3% year on year (Wyndham, Q2 2026). Wyndham deleted 18,900 US rooms from its system in the first half of 2026 while adding 14,900 (Wyndham, H1 2026).

Growth is in extended stay and conversions. Choice reported 13% growth in US extended-stay rooms and 30% more US franchise agreements awarded year on year, with 24,100 rooms in its US conversion pipeline (Choice Hotels, Q2 2026). A conversion is an existing independent hotel joining a brand. Every conversion means a property migrating systems, retraining staff and re-doing its distribution setup, which makes it a moment of maximum openness to new software.

The operating gap: most hotels do not measure much

The Census Bureau's Annual Business Survey asked US accommodation firms about management practices. In 2023, 63.6% of accommodation firms used no key performance indicators at all, and only 3.9% tracked ten or more (US Census Bureau, ABS, 2023). 42.5% had no business targets, and 27.1% never monitored customer satisfaction, while 39.8% monitored it daily (ABS, 2023).

The cut by ownership shows the same pattern: 69.7% of female-owned US accommodation firms and 61.4% of male-owned US firms used no KPIs (ABS, 2023). This is the majority of the firm base, not a niche of laggards. In these statistics a small independent motel and a large managed hotel each count as one firm, so the shares describe businesses, not rooms.

AI adoption follows the same picture. In the Census Bureau's Business Trends and Outlook Survey, 8.6% of US accommodation businesses said they had used AI in a business function in the past two weeks in March 2026, 10.7% in June and 7.0% in late August to early September (BTOS, 2026). Over the same period, the share of US accommodation businesses that did not know whether they would use AI in the next six months rose from 21.2% to 28.5% to 35.1% (BTOS, 2026). Adoption is flat, and uncertainty is growing.

What is squeezing the operator

In March 2026, 44.6% of US accommodation businesses said prices they paid for goods or services had increased in the previous two weeks, 34.2% said operating revenue had decreased, and 29.1% said interest-rate changes had reduced profitability over the last six months (BTOS, March 2026).

Weekly pay also varies a lot with business size. Average weekly US hotel wages were $767 at establishments with fewer than 5 employees, $565 at 10–19 employees and $1,043 at 500–999 employees in Q1 2024 (BLS QCEW, 2024).

An industry survey points the same way. In AHLA's February 2026 survey of US hoteliers, 71% named cost of goods and supplies a top financial pressure, 65% labour costs, 59% fluctuating demand and occupancy, and 50% utility and energy costs (AHLA, 2026; association survey, not official statistics). On the guest side, 22% of US hotel guests planned to pick a more budget-friendly hotel this year because of rising prices (AHLA Summer Travel Study, June 2026).

Regulation has also changed the pricing screen. Since 12 May 2025, the FTC's Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees requires anyone advertising short-term lodging in the US to show the total price, including mandatory resort and service fees, more prominently than other prices. It does not cap the fees themselves (FTC, 16 C.F.R. Part 464).

What this means for your product

Sell to the ownership group, price per property. A multi-property franchisee is a real budget holder, but it compares your tool with the brand-mandated stack it already pays for. Products that live inside the brand's own systems, such as the reservation system and loyalty, need a brand approval process first. Products in the gaps the brand does not cover, such as labour, maintenance, procurement and owner reporting across mixed-brand portfolios, can be sold straight to the owner.

Lead with costs, not AI. Cost pressure is reported by a majority of operators, while recent AI use stays around one in ten businesses. A pitch framed as "cut supply and labour cost per occupied room" lands with the 71% and 65%. A pitch framed as "AI for hotels" lands with the 7.0–10.7%.

Build the measurement layer. Nearly two thirds of accommodation firms track no KPIs. The first product many of them need is a simple, automatic view of occupancy, ADR, labour hours and cost per occupied room across their properties. That can become the entry point for everything you sell later.

Use conversions and extended stay as wedges. Conversion hotels re-tool anyway, and extended-stay is the segment where room count is growing fastest in the filings above. Both are moments when an owner is choosing software rather than defending the current setup.

Build the fee rules into checkout. Any guest-facing booking or upsell flow in the US has to display all-in pricing under the FTC rule. That is a requirement, not a feature.

What the data does not tell you

• No official count of independent versus branded properties. The franchise shares above cover four public brand companies, not the whole market. The independent segment is outside these filings.
• No software spend per room. The Atlas has no tier-1 figure for what US hotels spend on technology per room or as a share of revenue. Treat any vendor estimate as a sales claim.
• Management-practice data is from 2023, and it counts firms, not rooms. A chain operator and a single motel weigh the same.
• BTOS figures are two-week snapshots. They move between survey waves, so read them as a direction, not a precise level.
• Brand RevPAR covers comparable hotels in each brand system, not the US market as a whole. Segment definitions differ between companies.

The numbers support a narrower idea than "software for US hotels": a tool for franchise owners that controls cost per occupied room across a mixed-brand portfolio and is sold at the moment a hotel converts. Start from that buyer, and check every assumption about price against the US hotels Atlas cell before you write the pitch.