How we source: figures on this page come from the company’s own filings (SEC 10-K, 10-Q and earnings releases, or its annual report), with the period stated next to each number. Last refreshed October 2026. Our methodology.
In short
Marriott makes money by lending its brands, booking systems and Marriott Bonvoy loyalty programme to hotels it mostly does not own, in return for fees. In FY2025 franchise, base and incentive fees came to $5.4 billion gross. Reported revenue was $26.2 billion, but $19.2 billion of that was cost reimbursements that hotel owners repay without mark-up.
Fees are the business. Franchisees pay royalties, typically a percentage of room revenue; owners of hotels Marriott manages pay a base fee on hotel revenue and an incentive fee on hotel profit. In FY2025 franchise fees were $3,325M, base management fees $1,322M and incentive management fees $791M.
Marriott revenue by fiscal year, FY2021 to FY2025, from the company's filings. Chart: The Business Engineer.
Franchise fees also carry the co-branded credit cards. Banks including JPMorgan Chase and American Express pay Marriott for the Bonvoy brand; Marriott says higher card and other brand fees added $105M to franchise fees in FY2025, more than rooms growth ($94M).
Cost reimbursement revenue, $19,204M, is 73% of the total. These are mainly payroll at managed hotels and centralised marketing, reservations and loyalty costs that owners repay with no mark-up. Marriott says they are not designed to affect its economics over time; in FY2025 reimbursed expenses exceeded them by $299M.
How Marriott compares
Against its own history, total revenue rose from $13,857M in FY2021 to $26,186M in FY2025, and net fee revenues from $2,619M to $5,303M.
Across regions, U.S. & Canada produced $2,921M of segment net fee revenues and $2,679M of segment profit, about 70% of the four reportable segments’ net fees. International grew faster: EMEA net fees rose 8% and APEC 9%, against 2% in U.S. & Canada.
Incentive fees lean abroad. Marriott earned them from 85% of its international managed hotels but 32% in U.S. & Canada; 67% of incentive fees came from international hotels.
What changed in FY2025
Net income rose 9.5% to $2,601M and operating income 9.9% to $4,141M. Interest expense rose to $809M from $695M.
Marriott revenue by line, prior year against FY2025, as reported. Chart: The Business Engineer.
The system grew to 1,779,936 rooms, with 703 properties added, including 37 from the $355M citizenM brand purchase, and 253 removed, including all Sonder properties.
Marriott bought back 12.1 million shares for $3.3 billion.
What to watch
U.S. demand: RevPAR rose only 0.7% in U.S. & Canada; Marriott cites weaker business transient demand, partly from lower government travel, at select-service hotels.
Distribution: the company warns that AI tools from travel intermediaries may change how guests book, raising distribution costs and weakening loyalty.
Growth: Marriott expects net rooms growth of 4.5% to 5.0% in 2026, from a pipeline of nearly 610,000 rooms, 43% under construction.
Frequently asked questions
How does Marriott make money?
Mainly from fees. In FY2025 it earned $3,325M in franchise fees, $1,322M in base management fees and $791M in incentive management fees. It owns or leases fewer than 1% of its properties.
Why is Marriott's revenue $26.2 billion if fees are about $5.4 billion?
Because $19,204M of FY2025 revenue was cost reimbursements: hotel payroll and shared programmes that Marriott pays for and owners repay with no mark-up. They show up as both revenue and expense.
How much do credit cards matter to Marriott?
Marriott has Bonvoy co-branded cards in 11 countries and says card and other brand fees added $105M to franchise fees in FY2025. The 10-K does not give the total card fee figure.
How big is Marriott?
At 31 December 2025 it had 9,805 properties and 1,779,936 rooms in 145 countries and territories, with nearly 610,000 rooms in the pipeline.
Marriott’s business model centers around providing hospitality services and accommodations to a diverse range of customers, including travelers, corporations, and event organizers. They generate revenue through hotel operations, brand development, and customer loyalty programs. Key activities include managing hotels, marketing the brand, and building customer relationships. Marriott relies on key resources such as hotel properties, skilled workforce, and technology infrastructure — as explored in the economics of AI compute infrastructure — . Strategic partnerships and cost management are also essential elements of their model.
Value Proposition
Hospitality Excellence: Marriott’s value proposition revolves around its commitment to providing exceptional hospitality experiences to guests worldwide. With a diverse portfolio of hotel brands catering to different travel preferences and budgets, Marriott offers a wide range of accommodation options, amenities, and personalized services that meet the needs and expectations of travelers.
Brand Diversity and Quality: Marriott’s extensive brand portfolio encompasses luxury, premium, select-service, and extended-stay hotel brands, allowing guests to choose accommodations that align with their preferences and lifestyle. From iconic luxury properties to budget-friendly options, Marriott brands uphold consistent quality standards, delivering memorable stays and guest satisfaction across all segments.
Loyalty and Rewards Program: Marriott Bonvoy, the company’s loyalty program, offers members exclusive benefits, rewards, and personalized experiences across its global network of hotels, resorts, and partner properties. By prioritizing member recognition, elite status perks, and points redemption options, Marriott enhances guest loyalty, retention, and engagement, fostering long-term relationships with its customer base.
Innovative Technology and Services: Marriott leverages innovative technology and digital solutions to enhance the guest experience, streamline operations, and drive efficiency across its properties. From mobile check-in and keyless entry to in-room entertainment systems and digital concierge services, Marriott embraces technology to deliver convenience, connectivity, and personalization to guests.
Revenue Model
Room Revenue: The primary revenue source for Marriott is room revenue generated from hotel room bookings. Guests pay for accommodations based on nightly rates, occupancy levels, and room categories, contributing to the company’s overall revenue stream. Marriott employs dynamic pricing strategies, seasonal promotions, and distribution partnerships to maximize room revenue and optimize hotel occupancy rates.
Food and Beverage: Marriott generates revenue from food and beverage sales at its hotel restaurants, bars, cafes, and banquet facilities. By offering diverse culinary experiences, catering services, and event venues, Marriott captures additional revenue from guest dining, social gatherings, meetings, and special events hosted on its properties.
Meetings and Events: Marriott earns revenue from hosting meetings, conferences, conventions, and special events at its hotels and resorts. With extensive event spaces, audiovisual capabilities, and professional event planning services, Marriott venues attract business travelers, event organizers, and group bookings, generating incremental revenue through event-related services and facilities.
Franchise Fees and Management Contracts: Marriott operates under various business models, including franchise agreements and management contracts, to expand its hotel portfolio while minimizing capital investment. Franchisees pay initial fees, ongoing royalties, and marketing contributions to operate Marriott-branded properties, while Marriott earns management fees for overseeing hotel operations and providing support services.
Marketing Strategy
Brand Differentiation and Positioning: Marriott’s marketingstrategy focuses on brand differentiation, positioning, and storytelling to distinguish its hotel brands in the competitive hospitality market. Through targeted marketing campaigns, brand collaborations, and experiential activations, Marriott showcases the unique attributes, values, and experiences associated with each brand, appealing to diverse traveler segments and demographics.
Digital Marketing and Personalization: Marriott invests in digital marketing initiatives, including website optimization, search engine advertising, and social media engagement, to reach and engage consumers across digital channels. By leveraging data analytics and guest insights, Marriott delivers personalized marketing messages, offers, and recommendations tailored to individual preferences, booking behaviors, and loyalty status.
Content Marketing and Thought Leadership: Marriott produces compelling content, including travel guides, destination insights, and lifestyle content, to inspire and educate travelers while promoting its hotel brands and destinations. Through branded content partnerships, influencer collaborations, and storytelling campaigns, Marriott establishes itself as a trusted source of travel inspiration, thought leadership, and cultural relevance in the hospitality industry.
Loyalty Program Promotion: Marriott actively promotes its loyalty program, Marriott Bonvoy, as a key differentiator and value proposition for guests. Through targeted email campaigns, member-exclusive offers, and loyalty program partnerships, Marriott incentivizes enrollment, engagement, and retention within the Bonvoy ecosystem, driving repeat bookings, direct revenue, and brand advocacy among loyal customers.
Distribution Channels
Direct Booking Channels: Marriott encourages guests to book directly through its official website, mobile app, and reservation call centers to maximize direct bookings and reduce reliance on third-party online travel agencies (OTAs). By offering best-rate guarantees, member-exclusive discounts, and loyalty program benefits, Marriott incentivizes guests to bypass intermediaries and book directly with the company.
Global Distribution Systems (GDS): Marriott partners with global distribution systems, such as Amadeus, Sabre, and Travelport, to distribute its hotel inventory to travel agents, corporate clients, and online booking platforms worldwide. Through GDS connectivity, Marriott expands its reach and accessibility to business travelers, group bookings, and corporate accounts, facilitating seamless reservations and travel arrangements.
Online Travel Agencies (OTAs): While prioritizing direct bookings, Marriott maintains strategic partnerships with OTAs, including Expedia, Booking.com, and Priceline, to reach travelers who prefer booking through third-party platforms. Marriott distributes its inventory to OTAs under negotiated commission rates and contractual agreements, leveraging OTA reach and marketing exposure to capture incremental bookings and market share.
Corporate and Group Sales: Marriott employs dedicated sales teams to target corporate clients, meeting planners, travel management companies, and group organizers, securing business travel contracts, group bookings, and event reservations. Through personalized sales pitches, RFP responses, and negotiated rates, Marriott cultivates relationships with corporate customers and group organizers, driving group business and revenue growth.
Airbnb is a platform business model making money by charging guests a service fee between 5% and 15% of the reservation, while the commission from hosts is generally 3%. For instance, on a $100 booking per night set by a host, Airbnb might make as much as $15, split between host and guest fees.
Airbnb was initially called Airbedandbreakfast, as the main idea behind the starting of the company was to rent air mattresses in their apartment, as San Francisco filled up due to various conferences, to make some money to pay back the rent.
The Aibnb’s founders noticed this as they were designers. And a design conference (IDSA / ICSID) was about to happen in 2007; they launched Airbedandbreakfast as a service offering “Air Bed and Breakfast” to other designers coming to town who could not find available rooms in a hotel.
Thus from there, the initial name.
Yet, as Airbnb joined the Winter 2009 batch of the popular accelerator, YC, Paul Graham, founder of YC, suggested the founders change the name from Airbedandbreakfast to Airbnb – before demo day – as the name sounded better.
Airbnb is a two-sided marketplace where hosts and guests transact via its booking platform. Thus, Airbnb makes money by charging a fee on top of hosts and guests when a transaction goes through. For instance, in 2022, Airbnb generated $8.4 billion in transaction rate, with an average take rate of 13.3%.
The Airbnb story began in 2008 when two friends shared their accommodation with three travelers looking for a place to stay. Just over a decade later, it is estimated that the company now accounts for over 20% of the vacation rental industry. As a travel platform, Airbnb competes with other brands like Booking.com, VRBO, FlipKey, and given its massive amount of traffic from Google. Also, platforms like Google Travel can be considered potential competitors able to cannibalize part of Airbnb’s market.
As a peer-to-peer platform, once the transaction between host and guest goes through, Airbnb will collect a fee from both key players. For example, from a $100 booking per night set by the host, Airbnb might collect $3 as a hosting fee. While it might increase the price for the guest at $116 ($16 above the price set by the host) to collect its guest fees of $12 and taxes for the remaining amount.
In 2022, Airbnb generated $63.2 billion in gross booking value on over 393.7 Million Nights and Experiences Booked, an average revenue per booking of $161, $8.4 in revenue, and an average service fee of 13.3%.
Airbnb take rate is the percentage fee that the company gathers from hosts and guests on each booking that happens through the platform. The take rate for Airbnb fluctuated over the years, with a peak in 2020, at a 14.1% take rate and a 13.3% take rate in 2022.
Airbnb makes money by collecting a take rate on each transaction on the platform. In 2022, Airbnb processed over $63 billion in gross booking value, which translated into $8.4 billion in revenue. Airbnb also generated $1.9 billion in profits, and $3.4 billion in free cash flow in 2022.
Airbnb is primarily owned by its co-founders: Brian Chesky, with 76,407,686 Class B shares, which gives him 29.1% of ownership; Nathan Blecharczyk, with 232,306 Class A and 64,646,713 Class B, which give him 25.3%, and Joe Gebbia, which has 5,113,865 Class A and 58,023,452 Class B, which give him 22.9% ownership.
A storyboard is a linear sequence of illustrations used in animation to develop a broader story. A storyboard process is now used also in business to understand and map customers’ experience and enable the growth of the company using that process.
Airbnb arbitrage is a business model where the renter of a house or apartment sub-lets the property to Airbnb users. This is a model where the Airbnb arbitrageur can transform a long-term rental, with the main property owner, into a short-term rental, with higher rates and margins.
An accessory dwelling unit (ADU) is a term used to describe a secondary house or apartment located on the same plot of land as a larger, primary place of residence. This has become an industry for its own sake, with the potential to become the next trillion-dollar industry.
Samara is a manufacturer of prefab accessory dwelling units (ADUs) that can be installed and operational in a matter of hours. It started as an R&D unit of Airbnb in 2016. And it eventually was spun off and run by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, who now runs it full-time.
Booking Holdings is the company the controls six main brands that comprise Booking.com, priceline.com, KAYAK, agoda.com, Rentalcars.com, and OpenTable. Over 76% of the company revenues in 2017 came primarily via travel reservations commissions and travel insurance fees. Almost 17% came from merchant fees, and the remaining revenues came from advertising earned via KAYAK. As a distributionstrategy, the company spent over $4.5 billion in performance-based and brand advertising.
Trivago is a search and discovery travel platform part of Expedia Group. Trivago is widely known as a trusted hotel comparison service. Trivago doesn’t charge based on bookings but rather through a cost-per-click (CPC) model, monetized when a hotel searcher clicks one of its advertiser listings. This referral revenue comprises most of Trivago’s income. Trivago also has another minor revenue stream via subscriptions to its Business Studio, a tool that helps hoteliers track impression and click data associated with their properties.
Born in 1996 as a travel platform of Microsoft, it would be spun off later on. Expedia became among the largest online travel agencies (OTAs) which comprise a set of brands that go from Hotels.com, Vrbo, Orbits, CheapTickets, ebookers, Travelocity, Trivago, and others. The company follows a multi-brandstrategy.
Kayak is an online travel agency and search engine founded in 2004 by Steve Hafner and Paul M. English as a Travel Search Company and acquired by Booking Holdings in 2013 for $2.1 billion. The company makes money via an advertising model based on cost per click, cost per acquisition, and advertising placements.
OpenTable is an American online restaurant reservation system founded by Chuck Templeton. During the late 90s, it provided one of the first automated, real-time reservation systems. The company was acquired by Booking Holding back in 2014, for $2.6 billion. Today OpenTable makes money via subscription plans, referral fees, and in-dining with its first restaurant, as an experiment in Miami, Florida.
OYO’s business model is a mixture of platform and brand, where the company started primarily as an aggregator of homes across India, and it quickly moved to other verticals, from leisure to co-working and corporate travel. In a sort of octopus business strategy of expansion to cover the whole spectrum of short-term real estate.
TripAdvisor’s business model matches the demand for people looking for a travel experience with supply from travel partners around the world providing travel accommodations and experiences. When this match is created TripAdvisor collects commission from partners on a CPC and CPM basis. The non-hotel revenue comprises experiences, restaurants, and rentals.
Trivago is a search and discovery travel platform part of Expedia Group. Trivago is widely known as a trusted hotel comparison service. Trivago doesn’t charge based on bookings but rather through a cost-per-click (CPC) model, monetized when a hotel searcher clicks one of its advertiser listings. This referral revenue comprises most of Trivago’s income. Trivago also has another minor revenue stream via subscriptions to its Business Studio, a tool that helps hoteliers track impression and click data associated with their properties.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
