Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

Hotel and Motel Revenue Benchmark (Except Casino Hotels)

Short-term lodging in hotels and motels, excluding casino hotels, which the Census counts separately.

NAICS 721110, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average Hotel and Motel Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census counts every hotel and motel with paid employees, excluding casino hotels, and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing one by the other gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment below.

≈$3,670,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

56,260

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $206.2 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $206.2 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 56,260 employer establishments works out to $3,670,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.

Scope: Hotels (except Casino Hotels) and Motels (NAICS 721110). Hotels and motels except casino hotels, which the Census counts in a separate category. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.

The average here runs far above the other lodging categories on this site because room count scales well beyond a small inn and rate management is a full-time discipline. The figure covers hotels and motels together, so a roadside motel and a full-service hotel sit in the same mean.

Casino hotels are excluded by definition, and franchise fees, management contracts and property ownership structures sit entirely outside a receipts figure.

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
Establishment counts and combined receipts are published figures from the official source named in each figure's source line. BusinessNES divides one by the other and rounds to the nearest $10,000; no other adjustment is made. The full chain from published figure to this page is described on the methodology page.

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

Five-year establishment continuation benchmarkLine chart of industry continuation: 90.1 percent at 1 year, 83.9 percent at 2 years, 79.9 percent at 3 years, 74.8 percent at 4 years, 66.6 percent at 5 years. 4,268 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.100%75%50%25%0%2014-2018 cohort range: 65.5 to 67.9 percentStart: 100 percent, the starting count1 year: 90.1 percent of the starting count2 years: 83.9 percent of the starting count3 years: 79.9 percent of the starting count4 years: 74.8 percent of the starting count5 years: 66.6 percent of the starting count90.183.979.974.866.6Start1 year2 years3 years4 years5 years4,268 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.
Five years on, this industry group counted about 67 establishments aged five for every 100 that first reported paid employment in 2018. Census compares counts by age rather than following the same businesses, so read it as a broad continuation indicator for the industry group, not as a tracked survival rate.

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 hotels and motels on their own: they are 56,260 of the 61,381 employer establishments in that group, about 92 percent of it. How this is measured

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll covers housekeeping, front desk and maintenance staff, not franchise fees, debt service or the property itself.

Cost lineShare of receipts
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States≈24%

Payroll share of receipts, Hotels (except Casino Hotels) and Motels, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 24.0 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. Housekeeping scales with occupied rooms rather than with revenue, so housekeeping workload moves with occupied rooms, while both occupancy and room rate move payroll as a share of receipts.

This is not total labor cost or profit margin.

How to read this number
Payroll here is the census annual payroll figure, PAYANN: it includes wages, salaries, reported tips, commissions and bonuses paid to employees, and it excludes employer-paid benefits, employer payroll taxes, contractor payments and proprietor compensation. BusinessNES divides it by the same category total receipts, RCPTOT, and rounds to a whole percent.

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.

MeasureThis categoryGroup medianRank
Revenue per employer establishment$3,665,012$1,306,4982 of 7
Payroll share of receipts23.85%23.85%4 of 7
Employer establishments56,2602,3901 of 7

Position among 7 lodging categories, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category ranks 2nd of 7 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 1st of 7 by employer establishment count and 4th of 7 by payroll share. Payroll equals 23.85 percent of receipts here, exactly the group median. 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 categoryRevenue per establishmentPayroll shareEstablishments
Hotels (except Casino Hotels) and Motels (this page)$3,665,01223.85%56,260
Rooming and Boarding Houses, Dormitories, and Workers' Camps$1,351,88011.65%1,456
Recreational and Vacation Camps (except Campgrounds)$1,306,49830.06%2,840
All Other Traveler Accommodation$1,059,01728.82%2,331
RV (Recreational Vehicle) Parks and Campgrounds$869,51221.15%4,889

Nearest categories by average revenue, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category reports higher revenue per employer establishment than every category shown here: Rooming and Boarding Houses, Dormitories, and Workers' Camps, Recreational and Vacation Camps (except Campgrounds), All Other Traveler Accommodation and RV (Recreational Vehicle) Parks and Campgrounds. It contains more employer establishments than all four of them. 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 hotels and motels, and what to look at instead.

What the numbers do not show

Occupancy and rate are the two numbers that run a hotel, and the census reports neither. Two properties with the same annual receipts can be full at a low rate or half empty at a high one, and they are managed in completely different ways.

Whether a property is franchised or independent does not appear in these receipts. A franchised property pays fees and follows standards that an independent does not, and those obligations continue whether or not the rooms are full.

Operator lens

  • Fixed cost runs whether or not the room sells. An unsold night cannot be recovered, which is why distribution and pricing decisions matter more here than in businesses that hold inventory.
  • Channel mix decides how much of the rate you keep. Rooms sold through third parties arrive with commission attached, so two properties at the same published rate can net very different amounts.

Questions to ask before starting or buying

  • What are the occupancy and rate history by month? Ask for a full year by month, because an annual figure buries seasonality.
  • What does the franchise agreement require and when does it renew? Property improvement plans arrive with the renewal and are paid by the owner.
  • How old are the roof, the mechanical systems and the rooms? Deferred capital in a hotel is expensive and shows up in reviews before it shows up in accounts.
  • What share of business comes from contracts? Crew, corporate and government accounts stabilize occupancy and are usually renegotiated annually.
  • How is the property staffed overnight? Night coverage is a fixed cost and a safety obligation regardless of how many rooms are occupied.

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 Hotels (except Casino Hotels) and Motels (NAICS 721110), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. For hotels, note that casino hotels are excluded from this Census category.

Full method, sources and limits
The methodology page describes the full chain for every figure on this site: the published source, the sealed snapshot it was read from, the exact calculation if BusinessNES performed one, and the honest limits of scope and vintage. Read the methodology.

Spotted an error? Corrections are logged and published. Business data and benchmarks by BusinessNES.