The $1.9 Million Key and the $43,000 Key: What 2026’s Priced Hotel Deals Say Your Hotel Is Worth

Most hotel sales in America never come with a price tag. Most of the 2026 deals logged in The Hotelier Times Transaction Tracker never disclosed what the buyer actually paid. The ones that did, though, tell a story every owner thinking about a sale, a refinance, or a PIP should hear before the broker calls.

Here it is in one line: in 2026, the same hotel market paid about $1.9 million a key for a pair of Four Seasons resorts and agreed to a reported $38,000 to $48,000 a key for a 520-room tower in Chicago’s Streeterville. Everything in between depends less on the flag on the sign than on the capital the next owner will have to spend.

The top of the market is paying trophy prices

Start at the high end, because that is where the headlines live.

Host Hotels & Resorts sold the Four Seasons Resort Orlando at Walt Disney World Resort and the Four Seasons Resort and Residences Jackson Hole for $1.1 billion, closing Feb. 19, 2026. That is 569 rooms, or about $1.93 million a key, at 14.9 times trailing twelve-month EBITDA, according to the announcement carried by Hotel Online. Host had bought the pair in 2021 and 2022 for $925 million and said it earned an 11.0% unlevered internal rate of return over its ownership.

In Key West, Braemar Hotels & Resorts sold the 142-key Pier House Resort & Spa to Sixth Street and Riller Capital for $190 million in August, Hotel Dive reported. That works out to about $1.34 million a key.

And on Sept. 1, Ryman Hospitality Properties closed its purchase of Grande Lakes Orlando, the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton pair, for about $1.38 billion, according to Ryman’s filing with the SEC. With 1,592 rooms, 400-plus acres and roughly 320,000 square feet of meeting space, that is about $867,000 a key.

None of these buyers were paying for rooms alone. They were paying for irreplaceable land, group business and resort demand that is hard to build again.

The middle: boutique and urban, priced on income

One step down, the prices still look strong, but cap rates start doing the talking.

Pebblebrook Hotel Trust sold the 115-room Chamberlain West Hollywood for $43.5 million, about $378,000 a key, at a 5.9% cap rate, or 14.5 times EBITDA, according to its release.

Sunstone Hotel Investors sold the 821-room Hyatt Regency San Francisco to funds affiliated with Blackstone Real Estate on July 30 for $279 million, about $340,000 a key. When the deal was signed in June, Sunstone put the price at a 3.5% cap rate on trailing net operating income and 21.4 times hotel EBITDA. A 3.5% cap rate means the buyer is betting heavily on a San Francisco recovery, not on today’s income.

The small-hotel version of this story came from downtown Los Angeles. The 28-room Metric Hotel, which operated for decades as Jerry’s Motel before a redevelopment and a 2023 reopening, sold for $9.25 million, or $330,357 a key, Hotel Management reported. The sellers were a family trust that had held the property for more than 50 years, and Marcus & Millichap represented both sides. For independent owners, that deal is the most useful one on this list: a reinvented small property can trade at big-hotel prices per key.

The workhorses: select-service at $95,000 to $150,000 a key

This is where most of our readers live, and the numbers are much more modest.

The 150-room Embassy Suites Dulles Airport in Herndon, Va., sold for about $22.3 million net of selling costs, roughly $149,000 a key, with HREC Investment Advisors arranging the sale for Ashford Hospitality Trust (Connect CRE). Ashford used $21 million of the money to pay down a mortgage on a 13-hotel portfolio, according to a summary of its disclosure by Panabee. That was a sale driven by the seller’s debt, not by the hotel.

The 96-room Residence Inn Boston North Shore/Danvers sold for $13.5 million, or $140,625 a key, JLL said on Aug. 27. The hotel was built in 1989. Here is the detail that matters: the buyer, Torrington Properties, plans to keep it running as a Residence Inn for a while and then convert it to 88 apartments. Zoning approval for the conversion was secured before the sale closed. In other words, the buyer priced this hotel partly as an apartment building.

In Texas, Summit Hotel Properties, through its joint venture with GIC, sold the 122-room Hilton Garden Inn Longview for $12.3 million in February, about $100,800 a key, at a 6.8% cap rate, per Summit’s first-quarter 2026 results filed with the SEC.

Summit then closed the sale of the 103-room Courtyard and 96-room Residence Inn Dallas (Arlington South) on July 22 for $19.0 million combined, about $95,500 a key. Summit put the cap rate at 5.9%, or 5.4% if you strip out World Cup demand, in its second-quarter results.

The number most owners miss: the capex the buyer inherits

Look again at that Arlington sale. Summit said selling the two hotels let it avoid about $7.6 million in capital spending. That is roughly $38,000 a key, or about 40% of the price per key, sitting on the next owner’s to-do list.

It is not a one-off. Summit says that since 2023 it has sold or agreed to sell 15 hotels for about $219 million at a blended cap rate of about 4.7%, and those sales let it skip roughly $68 million in capital needs. The hotels it sold ran RevPAR of $86, about 30% below its remaining portfolio.

Read that from the buyer’s side. When a hotel needs a PIP, a new roof or a full room renovation, the buyer subtracts that bill from the price. A seller that has already done the work is selling a different, more valuable hotel than one that has not, even with the same flag and the same trailing income.

When the market stops paying for the past

The bottom of the range shows what happens when that bill gets too big.

Park Hotels & Resorts has the 520-room Wade Hotel on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago under contract to Vinayaka Hospitality, led by CEO Ketu Amin, at a reported $20 million to $25 million, according to Commercial Real Estate Direct. That is roughly $38,000 to $48,000 a key. Hoodline, citing The Real Deal, reported that the 1966 tower sold for $242,000 a room in 2012, and, citing JLL data reported by Crain’s, that its RevPAR now runs at just 79% of its competitors. CoStar reported that figure was 94.5% before the pandemic.

A hotel that falls from near-parity with its competitive set to 79% of it, in an aging building, gets priced on what it will cost to fix, not on what it used to earn.

What the wider market says

These deals sit inside a market that is trading more hotels at higher prices. HVS, citing MSCI Real Capital Analytics, said almost 1,000 U.S. hotels sold in the first half of 2026, nearly 14% more than a year earlier, at an average 8.2% cap rate on deals that reported one and an average $137,000 a key. For the third quarter through mid-September, the averages were 8.4% and $142,000 a key (HVS U.S. Market Pulse, September 2026). HVS forecasts 4.5% RevPAR growth for 2026 after a 0.3% decline in 2025 (HVS U.S. Market Pulse, July 2026).

That 8.2% average is a useful yardstick. The REIT sales above, at 3.5% to 6.8%, were priced well below it, which means buyers paid up for location or for a future they expect to be better than the present. A typical select-service hotel without those advantages should expect to be priced closer to the market average, and the select-service deals in this article, at $95,000 to $150,000 a key, bracket HVS’s $137,000 to $142,000 averages.

The bottom line

If you own a hotel and want to know what it is worth in 2026, the flag will get you into the right range, but three things decide where you land inside it:

1. Deferred capital. Every dollar of PIP or renovation you have not done comes off your price, often dollar for dollar. Summit’s sales put that figure near $38,000 a key in Arlington.
2. Performance against your competitive set. The Wade’s slide from 94.5% to 79% of its competitors helps explain a price per key that is a fraction of what it once sold for.
3. Your next-best use. The Danvers Residence Inn sold with apartment zoning already approved. If your land or building has a second life, a buyer will pay for it.

The trophy resorts will keep the headlines. The select-service hotel down the road, with its capital plan done and its index above 100, is the one that will actually get a good price.

Follow every priced U.S. hotel sale as it happens in The Hotelier Times Transaction Tracker.

Thinking about selling? List your hotel on The Hotelier Times Hotels for Sale page.