THAT DM
Brand standards drive capex in ways that are not obvious from the term sheet. Bedroom sizes, bathroom specification, lobby adjacency, food and beverage provision, technology stack. Each has a cost, and each has a reason, and the reasons are not always relevant to your building or your market.
In return you get distribution, a loyalty base, a rate premium in most markets and a financing conversation that is materially easier. That trade is often worth making. It is not always worth making, and it is almost never worth making on the first draft of the terms.
We have negotiated these agreements as the owner signing them, not as an adviser recommending them. That changes which clauses you spend your time on: the area of protection, the performance test, the termination mechanics, the capex reserve, and what happens at renewal.
The question is never whether a brand is good. It is whether this brand, on these terms, in this building, produces a better twenty-year outcome than the alternative.