Quantifying the Franchise Relationship During COVID-19

Robert Mandelbaum | August 8, 2022

By Robert Mandelbaum In 2020, the average hotel in CBRE’s annual Trends® in the Hotel Industry survey experienced a 108 percent decline in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), resulting in an EBITDA margin of -5.5 percent.  For hotels, EBITDA represents the cash flows from operations that are used to fund debt service and provide returns to investors.  This is by far the greatest decline in EBITDA since CBRE began tracking the performance of the U.S. lodging industry in the 1930s. Facing such traumatic declines in profitability and insolvency, hotel owners reached out to their lenders, investors...