Most Brands Don't Own Their Hotels

Many people don't realize this, but when you stay at a Marriott or Hilton or any other hotel brand, the hotel itself is not actually owned or even operated by the brand. There are three critical components to any hotel - (1) who owns the building, (2) who the employees work for, and (3) who the brand is. These used to all be one and the same, but in today's financialized day and age, they are each likely to be different. Here's how it works for a majority of hotels today:

• A Wall Street firm or billionaire individual(s) likely now owns the building as an investment with the goal of maximizing profit. They have no interest in running the day-to-day operations of a hotel so they hire someone else to do it.
• A third party hotel management company likely manages the hotel with no stake in the game to make sure their guests have a wonderful experience. After all, they've been hired by the building owner to maximize profit. The less they interact with or offer a guest, the more profit they make.
• To make their lives easier, the owner and management company then contract with a Wall Street company like Hilton, Marriott, Choice, Wyndham, IHG, Accor, etc. to handle marketing and reservations. Most of the time, this is in the form of a franchise agreement. The brands just want to collect fees and don't want any responsibility for your stay. Many people find this out the hard way when they have a bad experience and try voicing their concerns to the brand contacts only to get redirected back to the property team that caused the issue.

You see, the system is now set up so no one actually cares for or is responsible for the guest. They are all just in it for fees, profits, and their own self interests. If you have a bad experience, no worries, the system will find more guests to replace you. No wonder travelers constantly feel like they aren't being cared for or valued.

To restore the magic of travel, you need to seek out hotels where all three of these entities (building owner, operator/employer, and brand) are all the same entity/individual. It's the true owner-operator model of independent, non-branded hotels. They don't serve someone else (a distant investor, a distant manager, or a distant brand); they serve you the guest!

Because the travel booking system is set up by Wall St and billionaires to promote their own self interests, they make it incredibly challenging to discover and book these owner-operator independent hotels. Equation Travel's mission is to make finding and booking these hotels easy. We want these amazing businesses to thrive and stay out of the hands of Wall Street and billionaires, but it takes mindful travelers to become aware and do something about it.

Now that you know how hotel branding and ownership works, think twice about staying at branded, corporate owned or managed hotels, and instead stay at a place where you are valued as a guest.