Before you sign: What a soft brand actually sends your hotel

Two of the largest chains publish what their soft brands deliver: fuller rooms at a higher rate, most of it arriving through the loyalty program, and a booking count that includes channels an independent already has.

by Markus Busch

Every development team arrives with a number. So much of your business will come through us. Rates go up by this much. Most of that number lives in a presentation. In the United States, one version of it has to live somewhere stricter.

It is Item 19 of the franchise disclosure document, the section where a chain may publish how its hotels actually perform, provided it has a reasonable basis for the figures. Hilton and Marriott both publish there. Hilton's 2026 disclosure for Curio Collection was issued on March 30. Marriott's 2026 disclosure for Autograph Collection followed a day later. Both are soft brands built for independent hotels, and both documents answer the question a development team will raise first: what does the brand bring?

Read as an owner would, they make a strong case. They also show how that case is counted.

30% more revenue per room after conversion

Both chains track hotels that were independent before they took the flag.

Hilton follows 13 US hotels that converted to Curio. It compares the 18 months before conversion with the 18 months after, leaving out six months either side for the changeover. Average occupancy rose from 58.5% to 68.2%. The average rate rose from $225.32 to $252.23. Revenue per available room climbed 30.5%, from $131.76 to $171.94.

Marriott follows 31 hotels that converted to Autograph between 2015 and 2022. In the year before the flag, they averaged $177.48 a night at 64.6% occupancy. In the first year after it, $197.04 at 71.3%. Revenue per available room rose 22.4%, and another 8.5% in the second year, when occupancy reached 73.6%.

More rooms sold, at a higher rate, within the first year. That is the core of the offer, and it comes from the chains' own filings.

Two of eleven reached the average

The averages carry a few big winners.

Of the 11 franchised hotels among those 13 Curio conversions, two reached Hilton's average revenue per room after conversion. Median revenue per room rose 19%, not 30.5%. At Autograph, ten of the 31 converted hotels reached Marriott's first-year average.

Both tables count only hotels still flying the flag. A conversion that went badly and left the brand is not in them. Marriott's conversion years run straight through the pandemic and the recovery after it. Hilton's document gives the Curio conversion window two different ways, as 2014 to 2024 in its table and 2015 to 2025 in its text. Hilton's figures cover US hotels only. Marriott's add Canada.

Then look at where the converted hotels started. Curio's conversions averaged 58.5% occupancy before the flag. Autograph's averaged 64.6%. These were hotels with soft spots to fill, which is the owner the offer suits best.

Three of four guests arrive as loyalty members

Here is where the lift comes from.

At the 63 comparable Curio hotels in 2025, Hilton Honors members filled 75% of occupied rooms on average. The median was 78.7%. Hilton counts every room night a member booked: paid stays, free nights on points, and stays that earned no points at all. The lowest hotel was at 35.9%. The highest was at 92.7%. In room nights, the average Curio hotel took 40,665 from members last year.

Marriott measures it more narrowly and lands close by. Leaving out free nights on points, Bonvoy members filled 66.9% of occupied rooms at the 130 Autograph hotels in its sample. Members who earned points on a paid stay produced 63.9% of all room revenue, at an average of $298 a night.

This is the guest an independent hotel struggles to reach. She chooses inside the program, and the program now sends her to your door.

About half came through the brand's own doors

Marriott reports that its reservation channels delivered 75.1% of all room nights booked at Autograph hotels in 2025, and 76.6% of room revenue. That is the figure an owner is likely to hear.

Marriott's list of its own channels has five lines. Marriott.com delivered 47.3% of bookings. Phone reservations and its customer engagement centers together delivered 3.7%. The other two lines are the OTAs, at 7.6%, and the GDS, at 16.6%.

An independent hotel can sell through both of those without a flag, under its own contracts. In Marriott's count, they become Marriott's channels once the hotel is inside Marriott's system, with the chain's negotiated terms attached.

Take them out and the share that came through the brand's own doors, its website and its phone lines, is about half of all bookings. That half is still large, and it is the part an independent cannot build on its own.

The figures come with definitions

Both documents define every number they publish. Which hotels are included. Which nights count as a member's. Which channels count as the chain's. The definitions are where two presentations quoting the same document can differ.

So the useful questions for a development team are precise ones. Which hotels does the figure cover, and how many left the brand? Does the loyalty share include free nights on points? Which of the bookings counted as delivered came through channels the hotel already has? A chain that publishes the answers in Item 19 can give them in the meeting.

For a hotel with soft spots, the answers may well confirm the case. Behind the member who books it sits a loyalty program Marriott puts at about 271 million member accounts, across more than 9,700 hotels.

Read also: Before you sign: What an independent hotel should know about joining a soft brand

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