The name on the hotel is usually the company that owns the least of it. That single fact reorganizes how to research hospitality companies for sales: a branded hotel is typically three parties, a brand that licenses the flag and sets the standards, an owner that holds the real estate and pays for everything, and a management company that runs the building for a fee, and each one buys different things with different sign-offs. Restaurants split the same way between franchisor and franchisee. The public trail follows the split. Brand and REIT 10-Ks break out fee revenue from owned revenue. Franchise disclosure documents, filed publicly in several states, show unit growth, fees, and which vendors are mandated. Local health inspections and liquor licenses show the operating units. The checklist below reads them in that order. The prompt under it sorts the company into brand, owner, or operator and labels what it confirmed.
What is different about selling into Hospitality
Hospitality budgets are built at the property in September through November for the next calendar year, by the general manager and the management company, then approved by the owner, who is often a different company from either. Brand standards decide which systems are mandatory, and the owner pays for them, so a vendor on the brand's approved list sells into a captive channel and a vendor off the list sells one owner at a time. Restaurants mirror this: the franchisor approves vendors, the franchisee chooses among them. Labor is the largest controllable cost and the first lens on every purchase. Group purchasing organizations sit in the middle of procurement for supplies and, increasingly, technology. The signer for a property purchase is the owner's asset manager; for a portfolio, the management company's VP of operations or CIO; for a standard, the brand. Call the flag the owner and you have described a purchase the brand does not make.
How to research hospitality companies for sales: the checklist
Decide which role the company plays before you read anything else, because a brand, an owner, and an operator each make a different third of this checklist pointless. Then read in order and fill the gaps from the sources.
You are researching {{company}} ({{company URL}}), a hospitality company, so I can sell {{our product}} to them. Read their corporate site, investor pages and 10-K if public, development or portfolio pages, careers, and recent press.
Produce a one-page brief:
1. Role: brand or franchisor, owner, management company, franchisee or operator, or a combination, and the revenue split between fees and owned operations if disclosed.
2. Portfolio: segments, property or unit counts, markets, and which properties are owned, managed, or franchised.
3. Standards and systems: the PMS, POS, CRS, and other systems named anywhere, and which are brand-mandated.
4. Calendar: fiscal year, property budget season, and any seasonality or event cycle that matters in their markets.
5. Change: conversions, new contracts, unit growth, acquisitions, technology mandates, and executive hires in operations, revenue, or technology in the last year.
6. Likely budget owner for {{our product}}, and whether the purchase is decided by the brand, the owner, the operator, or the property.
Tag every line Confirmed (cite the page or filing) or Inferred (state the reasoning). Never estimate occupancy, RevPAR, or unit counts; write 'Not stated' and name the source that would. End with three first-call questions.- The 10-K for a public brand, hotel REIT, or restaurant company: the split between fee revenue (franchise and management) and owned revenue tells you what the company controls versus what it merely licenses.
- The franchise disclosure document, filed publicly in states like Wisconsin, Minnesota, and California: Item 8 lists required suppliers and approved vendors, Item 20 shows unit openings, closings, and transfers by year.
- The development or owners page on a brand's site, and the portfolio page on an owner's or operator's: property counts, segments (luxury, select service, extended stay), and which are managed, franchised, or owned.
- The careers page split between corporate and property roles: corporate posts naming a PMS (Opera, Mews), a POS (Toast, Oracle MICROS), or a CRS describe the standard stack; property posts show where the labor pressure is.
- State and city tourism board reports and lodging-tax collections for the markets they operate in: occupancy trends, visitor volume, and event calendars that shape each property's year.
- A wave of conversions or reflaggings announced: property improvement plans with funded capital, and an owner reconsidering every system the old brand required.
- New management contracts won or lost by a third-party operator: onboarding budgets and a stack that has to be stood up at each property in weeks.
- A brand technology mandate with a compliance date, or a new cloud PMS or POS rollout announced: a captive channel for anything that connects to it.
- Unit growth guidance from a franchisor, or a franchisee acquiring a portfolio: new properties or restaurants that need everything at once.
- Labor-cost commentary in earnings, or a new head of operations, revenue management, or technology: pressure for scheduling, productivity, and revenue tools with a payback the owner will accept.
- Is this company a brand, an owner, a management company, a franchisee or operator, or some combination, and which role does my product actually touch?
- Segment and scale: luxury or select service, full service or extended stay, quick service or casual dining, and how many properties or units in which markets?
- Which systems are mandated by the brand and which does the owner or operator choose?
- When is property budget season, and who approves it: the general manager, the management company, the owner's asset manager, or all three?
- Who owns the budget for what I sell: the brand's CIO or head of standards, the owner's asset manager, the operator's VP of operations, the director of revenue management, or the general manager?
- SEC EDGAR: 10-Ks for public hotel brands, hotel REITs, restaurant franchisors, and the larger franchisees.
- State franchise registration databases (Wisconsin DFI, Minnesota Department of Commerce, California DFPI): franchise disclosure documents, free to download.
- Local health department inspection portals and state alcoholic beverage control license lookups: operating units, ownership entities, and dates by address.
- State and city tourism offices and convention and visitors bureaus: visitor volume, lodging-tax collections, and market-level occupancy summaries published without a subscription.
Find out who holds the deed and who holds the management contract before you pitch the flag; the flag sets the rules and pays for none of them.
Run the research on a real account
A brand, an owner, and a third-party operator will all show up as 'hotels' in your CRM and only one of them can sign for what you sell. Hand the sorting to Claude. Paste the checklist and the prompt with the company's URL and it returns the list rewritten for the role this company plays, with confirmed facts separated from inferences.
I sell {{our product}} to {{buyer persona}} at hospitality companies. I am researching {{company}} ({{company URL}}).
Read their site and any public filings you can reach and tell me first: whether they are a brand, an owner, a management company, a franchisee or operator, or a combination; their segments; and their scale.
Then rewrite the research checklist below for this account. Drop items that belong to a role they do not play, reorder the rest by relevance to a {{our product}} conversation, and for each signal item state whether you saw it, did not see it, or could not check.
Name the most likely budget owner for {{our product}} here, whether the decision sits with the brand, the owner, the operator, or the property, and the budget-season or approval step that will slow the deal. Mark every line Confirmed or Inferred.
CHECKLIST:
{{paste the checklist above}}Research any account with Claude
- Account brief skill →The Claude skill that turns a company URL into a source-grounded first-call brief, plus the account plan template.
- 90-second account brief prompt →The copy-paste prompt version for one account, right now.
- Account brief from a URL, the use case →The full play, with the tool chain that researches every account on the list before the first call.
Frequently asked questions
How do you research hospitality companies for sales?
Sort the company into brand, owner, or operator first, because each one buys different things and the flag on the building is rarely the company that pays for it. For a public brand or REIT, the 10-K splits fee revenue from owned revenue. For a franchisor, the franchise disclosure document lists approved vendors and unit growth. For an operator, the portfolio page and corporate job posts show the systems and the labor pressure. Add the local tourism board's numbers for their markets and you have a brief in twenty minutes.
Who pays for technology in a franchised hotel?
The owner, almost always, even when the brand decides. Brand standards specify the property-management system, the reservation system, the loyalty integration, and often the guest-facing technology, and the franchise agreement requires the owner to buy and maintain them. The management company, if there is one, implements and operates them on the owner's behalf. Anything outside the standards is the owner's choice, usually proposed by the general manager or the operator and approved by the owner's asset manager during fall budget season. Vendors on the brand's approved list skip most of that debate.
What is in a franchise disclosure document that helps a salesperson?
Item 8 lists the products and services a franchisee must buy from designated or approved suppliers, which tells you whether your category is mandated, restricted, or open. Item 11 describes the required technology systems, including point-of-sale and property-management systems. Item 20 shows unit openings, closings, transfers, and projected openings by state, which is the growth pipeline. Item 21 attaches the franchisor's audited financials. Several states publish FDDs free; Wisconsin's Department of Financial Institutions and California's DFPI are the usual starting points.