Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Bed and Breakfast Revenue and Continuation Benchmark
Small lodging properties with a handful of rooms and breakfast included in the nightly rate.
Average Bed and Breakfast Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census counts every bed and breakfast inn with paid employees and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing one by the other gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment below.
≈$490,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
2,390
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $1.2 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $1.2 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 2,390 employer establishments works out to $490,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.
Scope: Bed-and-breakfast inns (NAICS 721191). Bed and breakfast inns only; hotels, motels and vacation rentals are separate categories. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.
A bed and breakfast earns from a very small number of rooms, so the ceiling is set by inventory rather than by effort: a property with five rooms cannot sell a sixth on a busy night. Room count sets the physical ceiling, and occupancy and nightly rate decide how much of it turns into revenue.
Seasonality is severe in most markets and an annual average hides it completely, while short-term rental platforms have moved both the pricing floor and guest expectations in the same period.
Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed July 2026
Where these figures come from
Data Source Notice
This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.
Figures above are from the 2022 Economic Census reference year, released by the Census Bureau in 2024 and 2025; markets have moved since.
Employer Establishments at Year Five Industry group
Traveler Accommodation, NAICS 7211, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.
66.6%the year-five count as a share of the starting count
Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 65.5 to 67.9 percent. This benchmark covers Traveler Accommodation, NAICS 7211, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for bed and breakfast inns on their own: they are 2,390 of the 61,381 employer establishments in that group, about 4 percent of it. How this is measured
Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data
Payroll covers housekeeping and front of house staff, not the mortgage, insurance and upkeep that dominate a small property's fixed costs.
| Cost line | Share of receipts |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈27% |
Payroll share of receipts, Bed-and-breakfast inns, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 27.0 percent of every revenue dollar in this category goes to annual payroll. As the census defines it, payroll includes wages, salaries, reported tips, commissions and bonuses; it excludes employer-paid benefits, employer payroll taxes, contractor payments and owner compensation. Treat it as one verified anchor, not a full labor cost breakdown. Many inns are run by resident owners, so paid payroll understates the real work behind the rooms; the Census figure counts wages paid to employees, not the hours the owners put in themselves.
This is not total labor cost or profit margin.
How to read this number
Position Within Its Comparison Group Computed from official data
Where this category sits among 7 lodging categories in the same 2022 Economic Census release. Ranks and the group median are computed on exact values, before the rounding used above.
| Measure | This category | Group median | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue per employer establishment | $492,392 | $1,306,498 | 7 of 7 |
| Payroll share of receipts | 27.11% | 23.85% | 3 of 7 |
| Employer establishments | 2,390 | 2,390 | 4 of 7 |
Position among 7 lodging categories, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category ranks 7th of 7 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 4th of 7 by employer establishment count and 3rd of 7 by payroll share. Payroll equals 27.11 percent of receipts here, 3.27 percentage points above the group median of 23.85 percent. A higher or lower position is not a measure of profit or of business quality: the census reports receipts and payroll only.
Compared With Similar Business Types Computed from official data
The 4 categories closest to this one by average revenue inside the same comparison group.
| Census category | Revenue per establishment | Payroll share | Establishments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bed-and-breakfast inns (this page) | $492,392 | 27.11% | 2,390 |
| RV (Recreational Vehicle) Parks and Campgrounds | $869,512 | 21.15% | 4,889 |
| All Other Traveler Accommodation | $1,059,017 | 28.82% | 2,331 |
| Recreational and Vacation Camps (except Campgrounds) | $1,306,498 | 30.06% | 2,840 |
| Rooming and Boarding Houses, Dormitories, and Workers' Camps | $1,351,880 | 11.65% | 1,456 |
Nearest categories by average revenue, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than every category shown here: RV (Recreational Vehicle) Parks and Campgrounds, All Other Traveler Accommodation, Recreational and Vacation Camps (except Campgrounds) and Rooming and Boarding Houses, Dormitories, and Workers' Camps. It contains more employer establishments than two of the four categories shown. Every figure in this table comes from the same 2022 Economic Census release and the same employer establishment population, so the columns are directly comparable.
Beyond the Benchmark BusinessNES analysis
What the census figures leave out about bed and breakfast inns, and what to look at instead.
What the numbers do not show
Most of these properties are also someone's home, and the census cannot separate the household from the business. That arrangement lowers cost and makes the operator's own labor invisible in every figure on this page.
Room count fixes the ceiling. A property cannot serve more guests by working harder; growth comes from rate and occupancy.
Operator lens
- Guests are choosing the hosting as much as the room. That is why the business does not transfer as cleanly as the building does: a sale hands over the property, not the relationship the reviews describe.
- Breakfast is a labor decision, not a food decision. The meal ties the operator to a fixed morning schedule every day the house is occupied.
Questions to ask before starting or buying
- How many nights were actually sold last year? Ask for nights by month rather than revenue, because seasonality here is severe.
- What zoning and permits apply? Short-stay accommodation in residential areas is regulated locally and rules change more often than buildings do.
- What are the review profiles and who wrote them? Reputation attaches to the current host, and a change of ownership resets part of it.
- What condition are the guest bathrooms and heating in? These are the two areas that generate complaints and typically the costliest to renovate in an older house.
- Is the property mortgaged as a home or as a business? The financing structure affects both the sale and what a buyer can borrow.
Explore More on BusinessNES
More BusinessNES guides and rankings, plus neighboring benchmark pages built from the same verified data.
Sources and Methodology
Every figure on this page is bound to a published source, and each figure's own source line names that source precisely: the 2022 Economic Census for counts, receipts and payroll, and the Census Bureau's Business Dynamics Statistics for the industry continuation benchmark. Where a page shows a sector survival curve instead, that series comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
BusinessNES performs the arithmetic on those published figures and nothing else. Receipts are divided by establishments, and payroll by receipts. The age-five establishment count is divided by the age-zero establishment count for the same four-digit industry group, then repeated across five age-zero cohorts to give a reference and a range. This category's share of its industry group, along with the ranks, medians and nearest peers in the comparison sections, comes from the same published tables. Every one of them is recomputed from the sealed source files at each release and blocks publication if it does not match. Results are rounded and marked approximate. The reference year is 2022 for revenue and payroll; treat every figure as a baseline, not today's market.
Category scope matters: these figures cover Bed-and-breakfast inns (NAICS 721191), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. For inns, note that the category excludes hotels and motels, so the average reflects small properties only.
Full method, sources and limits
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