Choice Hotels is mainly a hotel franchisor. It does not run most of the hotels that carry its names. Instead, independent hotel owners pay it for the right to use its brands, which include Comfort Inn, Quality Inn, Sleep Inn, Econo Lodge, Clarion, Radisson, WoodSpring Suites, Cambria Hotels and Everhome Suites. At the end of 2025 its system had 7,575 open hotels with 656,825 rooms in 49 states, the District of Columbia, and 50 countries and territories.
Its main source of revenue is franchise fees. These include an initial fee and ongoing royalty, marketing and reservation fees, usually set as a percentage of a hotel's room revenue. It also earns money from deals with vendors and travel partners, and from a small number of hotels it owns (such as Cambria and Everhome Suites hotels) and manages. Most of its revenue comes from the United States, even though it also franchises abroad, often through master franchisees who sub-license its brands in a region.
It had another 825 hotels in its pipeline: under construction, awaiting conversion or approved for development. The company says it does not plan to keep owned hotels for the long term and expects to sell them to franchisees who sign long-term Choice franchise agreements.