A management agreement can run for decades. It is usually negotiated once, quickly, by an owner facing a counterparty that has done it hundreds of times. This practice exists to close that gap.
Selecting an operator or a brand is one of the few decisions in a hospitality asset's life that is genuinely difficult to reverse. The agreement governs fees, control, performance standards, capital obligations and termination for the length of its term — and the owner's leverage is highest before signature and negligible after it.
Hosprophets acts for the owner. We are not an operator seeking a contract and not a broker seeking a fee from either side, so the advice is about which structure serves the asset. Sometimes that is a global brand; sometimes it is a regional operator, a franchise, a white-label arrangement or independent operation. The right answer follows from the asset, not from the brand's ambitions in the market.
Building and screening a candidate list against the asset rather than against brand recognition — segment fit, existing presence and distribution in the market, technical services capability, performance in comparable assets, appetite for the deal and the terms each is realistically likely to accept.
Testing whether a brand's guest promise, standards and pricing position match the asset that was actually designed and the demand the market actually generates. Misalignment here is expensive twice: in capital spent meeting standards the market does not pay for, and in demand the brand cannot deliver.
A clause-by-clause commercial read of the agreement and its ancillaries: term and renewal, performance tests and termination rights, budget and capital approval, owner protections, reporting and audit rights, area restrictions, key personnel, centralised charges and the technical services agreement that usually accompanies it.
Modelling the full economic cost of the relationship — base and incentive fees, marketing, loyalty, reservation and central service charges, technical services and licence fees — against the revenue and margin uplift the operator is expected to deliver, so the owner can see the net position across the term rather than the headline rate.
Establishing what the asset is, what it needs from a partner and what the market will offer it.
Deciding the operating structure and the shortlist that best fits the asset's positioning and economics.
Running the process, comparing term sheets and negotiating the commercial terms clause by clause.
Coordinating the transition into pre-opening so the agreement's obligations are actually delivered.
Monitoring performance against the contract's tests and using the owner's rights when it falls short.
The five-phase roadmap runs across every Hosprophets mandate. See the full process →
The terms an owner can obtain depend heavily on where the asset sits. In markets where a brand is expanding aggressively, competition among operators improves owner terms materially; in mature markets with established presence, leverage shifts the other way. Legal frameworks around termination and performance tests, the depth of regional operators, franchise availability and the value a brand's distribution genuinely adds all vary by region. We advise owners across global markets and benchmark terms against what is achievable in that specific market rather than against a generic template.
A first conversation costs nothing and usually clarifies more than a proposal does. Tell us about the asset, the site or the problem, and we will tell you plainly whether we can help.
