Hilton runs more than 8,000 hotels across 140-plus countries and barely holds the deeds to any of them. The real business is a fee machine wrapped around 200 million loyalty members - and it started with one man and a cheap hotel in Cisco, Texas.
Choice Hotels built a 661,089-room network by owning very few of the rooms. Its real product is the connective tissue - brands, bookings, loyalty and software that help thousands of independent hotel owners compete.