How Much Does It Cost to Build a Comfort Inn in 2026, and How Is It Financed?

A new Comfort Inn or Comfort Inn & Suites costs $10,318,405 to $16,302,115 to build in 2026, excluding land, which is $115,937 to $183,170 per room on the 89-room Rise & Shine prototype, according to Choice Hotels' franchise disclosure document issued April 1, 2026. A Comfort Suites runs higher, at $11,478,095 to $18,328,875, or $128,967 to $205,942 per room. Owners finance the build with a bank or direct construction loan at 55% to 65% of cost, often with a C-PACE layer, or with an SBA 504 structure that cuts the equity to 15%.

Here is what that means on a real site. An 89-room Comfort Inn at $11.5 million of building cost plus $1.2 million of land is a $12.7 million project, about $143,000 per key. A 60% construction loan of $7.62 million, a $1.4 million C-PACE assessment and $3.68 million of equity fund it. The catch is coverage: at the brand's 2025 prototype-average RevPAR of $69.35, the hotel covers that debt only 1.15 times. The site needs about $79 of RevPAR to clear a lender's 1.30x test. This guide walks the FDD budget line by line, the fees, the 2025 performance data and both financing stacks. Choice owners can see lender fit by program in the best financing options for Choice Hotels owners.

Key takeaways

• 2026 FDD: Comfort Inn $10.3M to $16.3M for 89 rooms, land excluded; Comfort Suites $11.5M to $18.3M.
• Cost per room is $116,000 to $183,000, mostly below the $170,000 to $197,000 HVS limited-service median.
• The 2026 budget rose 9% at the low end and 14% at the high end over the 2025 FDD.
• Rise & Shine hotels averaged 61.2% occupancy, $113.23 ADR and $69.35 RevPAR in 2025.
• Finance with 55-65% construction debt plus C-PACE, or SBA 504 at 15% equity if coverage allows.

What does the Comfort Inn FDD budget include?

The table is the 2026 Comfort FDD Item 7 for a new-build Comfort Inn or Comfort Inn & Suites, which assumes 89 rooms and excludes land and real estate taxes. The 2025 FDD put the same hotel at $9,464,745 to $14,346,795, so the budget rose 9.0% at the low end and 13.6% at the high end in one year. That tracks HVS's finding that hotel construction cost indexes rose 4.1% in 2025 and 4.8% over the trailing twelve months, plus the three rooms the updated prototype added.

Three things sit outside the table. Land is excluded, and a 1.65-acre site for the four-story prototype runs anywhere from $800,000 in a secondary market to several million in a metro. The construction line excludes site work in some markets. And an interest reserve, which lenders require, adds roughly 4% to 6% of the loan over an 18-month build.

The hotel itself is the Rise & Shine prototype: four stories, about 44,000 gross square feet for a Comfort Inn & Suites and 48,600 for a Comfort Suites, on 1.65 acres. In March 2025 Choice value-engineered the design to add three keys inside the same footprint, cut FF&E SKUs by about 30% and target a 10% to 15% reduction in construction cost, which is why the FDD now assumes 89 rooms rather than 86.

What are the Comfort Inn franchise fees?

The affiliation fee is $500 per room with a $50,000 minimum for a new franchise, which includes a $5,000 application fee; transfers and renewals pay $750 per room with a $65,000 minimum. Ongoing fees are a 6% royalty on gross room revenue and a 3.5% marketing and reservation fee, for 9.5% before loyalty charges. The term is 20 years from the opening date with no renewal provision.

For context, Comfort is Choice's largest brand: 1,652 U.S. hotels with 128,836 rooms at December 31, 2025 per the annual report (the FDD's Item 19 counts 1,643 open hotels as of its own reporting date) and about 123 hotels in the pipeline, more than half of them new construction. The U.S. system shrank by a net 20 hotels in 2025 as older properties left, which is part of why Choice is pushing the new prototype.

How does a new Comfort Inn perform?

Item 19 of the 2026 FDD reports 2025 results for 1,581 of the 1,643 open U.S. Comfort hotels: average occupancy of 59.7%, ADR of $107.62 and RevPAR of $64.28, with 81.3% of room revenue delivered through Choice's channels. Comfort Suites ran 62.1% occupancy, $107.11 ADR and $66.53 RevPAR in the same Choice data for 2025. The number that matters for a new build is the prototype subset: hotels developed under Rise & Shine averaged 61.2% occupancy, $113.23 ADR and $69.35 RevPAR in Choice's 2025 Item 19 data, about 8% above the brand.

Use that $69.35 as the floor for your pro forma, not the ceiling. New Comfort Inns in markets with strong highway or medical demand run $80 to $95 of RevPAR, and the financing math below shows why the difference between $69 and $79 is the difference between a loan that closes and one that does not.

How do owners finance a Comfort Inn build?

Two structures cover most new Comfort Inns: a conventional construction loan with a C-PACE layer, or an SBA 504 loan. Both are sized on the stabilized NOI, not on cost, so run the coverage math before the equity math. Bridge lends directly on hotel construction from $10 million to $50 million and places bank, SBA and C-PACE executions below that; it financed an 88-key Comfort Suites acquisition with three term sheets in 10 days and a 45-day close.

Stack 1: conventional construction loan plus C-PACE

The project: $11.5 million of building cost (inside the FDD range) plus $1.2 million of land, $12.7 million in total, $142,700 per key.

At the prototype-average RevPAR of $69.35, your hotel books about $2.25 million of room revenue, $2.32 million in total, and about $880,000 of NOI at a 38% margin. Permanent debt service is about $646,000 on the bank loan and $124,000 on the C-PACE assessment, $770,000 combined, for a 1.15x DSCR. Lenders underwrite hotel construction at 1.25x to 1.50x stabilized coverage and a 10.5% to 12% debt yield per Crittenden's 2026 outlook, so this deal needs about $1.0 million of NOI, which is about $79 of RevPAR, or the loan shrinks to about $6.4 million and the equity rises to $4.9 million. The full list of what the lender checks is in the hotel construction loan requirements for 2026.

Stack 2: SBA 504

A hotel is a special-purpose property under the SBA 504 program, so the equity is 15%, or 20% if the business is also under two years old. On the same $12.7 million project:

The debenture sits under the $5.5 million cap. The trade is coverage: debt service rises to about $914,000, so the hotel needs $1.05 million of NOI to meet the 1.15x minimum the new SOP 50 10 8.1 applies to 504 projects of $5 million or more, and more like $1.2 million to satisfy the bank. At a 38% margin on this deal, $1.05 million of NOI is about $85 of RevPAR and $1.2 million is about $94. SBA 504 works for a Comfort Inn when the cost lands near the low end of Item 7 or the market's ADR is above $120; the ownership and citizenship rules are in Bridge's SBA hotel loan benchmarks.

What lenders want to see on a Comfort Inn

A signed Choice franchise agreement, a GMP contract with a bonded general contractor, a budget inside the FDD range with 10% to 15% contingency, an STR competitive-set report, a stabilized pro forma that starts at or below the Item 19 prototype average, and sponsor liquidity of 10% to 20% of the loan after closing. Choice's Comfort FDD also names two qualified-vendor lenders for equipment and SBA loans, and its Item 10 "selected capital support" program can fund a forgivable note after opening on properties the brand considers strategic.

How does a Comfort Inn compare with other brands to build?

A Comfort Inn costs more per room than the economy extended-stay brands because it carries a breakfast area, meeting space and a larger lobby, and earns more per room for the same reason: $69 of prototype RevPAR against WoodSpring's $52. The cheaper build is not the better deal unless the market cannot support a $110 ADR; the ranges for every segment are in how much it costs to build a hotel in 2026.

When is building a Comfort Inn the wrong tool?

• Avoid it if your market's upper-midscale RevPAR is under $75. The coverage math above does not close at the brand average; a Comfort Inn needs a site that out-earns the system.
• Avoid a new build if a conversion exists. The brand's 2025 net loss of 20 U.S. hotels means older Comforts are available, and a conversion PIP costs a fraction of a ground-up budget.
• Avoid SBA 504 if the business is new and the cost is at the high end. The 20% equity and 1.15x floor both bite at $16 million of cost.
• Avoid starting without the franchise agreement. Lenders will not underwrite brand-driven hard costs on a letter of intent, and Choice's approval takes 60 to 90 days.
• Avoid it if you cannot post 10% to 20% of the loan in liquidity after closing. Every 2026 construction lender checks it.