“Defunct” can mean a hotel company was acquired, a chain stopped operating under its name, or a related business—such as a restaurant chain—closed. Those are different outcomes: some hotels and brands survived their former owners. The evidence available here supports four distinct historical cases, but it does not identify two active chains that can responsibly be described as “on their last leg.”
What does “defunct” mean for a hotel chain?
A hotel company, its brand, and the buildings that once carried its name are not the same thing. An acquisition can end a corporation without closing its hotels; a brand can be retired while buildings keep operating under new names; and one property’s closure says little by itself about a franchised chain. The cases below specify which of these events occurred.
Four American hotel-chain cases—and what actually ended
Howard Johnson: the restaurants ended; the hotel brand continued
Howard Johnson’s restaurant business and its lodging operation took separate paths. Marriott sold the lodging operation to Prime Motor Inns in 1985, after acquiring the company from Imperial Group that year. Following later ownership changes, the inns became part of Wyndham’s portfolio under the Howard Johnson by Wyndham name. The last Howard Johnson’s restaurant closed in 2022, but that did not end the hotel brand. The American Business History Center reported 310 Howard Johnson by Wyndham locations at year-end 2020, including 168 in the United States; those are historical counts, not a current total. American Business History Center’s account
Imperial 400: a motel chain that went bankrupt and was later dissolved
Founded in 1959, Imperial 400 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1965, was sold by the 1980s, and was later dissolved, according to the historical account. Its end as a chain did not mean every building disappeared; former Imperial 400 structures may still stand. The account cites John A. Jakle, Keith A. Sculle, and Jefferson S. Rogers’s The Motel in America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pages 160–162, and a Wall Street Journal report dated June 11, 1965. These sources establish the broad timeline, not a detailed explanation of the chain’s financial causes.
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Promus Hotel Corporation: the company ended in an acquisition
Promus was a hotel owner, manager, and franchisor. Hilton acquired it in 1999, after which Promus ceased to exist as a company. That corporate ending should not be read as proof that every hotel or brand associated with Promus vanished; businesses and properties can continue under an acquiring company.
Royal Inns of America: the chain collapsed, while properties changed hands
Royal Inns of America is described as a defunct chain that filed under Chapter X. The history of its properties shows why a chain’s end is not the same as a property’s closure: after the company collapsed, its Anaheim hotel was sold and later operated as the Sheraton Park Hotel; its Tijuana property was sold to Ramada after bankruptcy and later became Marriott Tijuana. These are examples of successor ownership and names, not evidence that the buildings shut down when Royal Inns did.
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Are two active hotel chains “on their last leg”?
The evidence does not establish that. The title does not identify the two chains, and the available recent closure reporting is about individual DoubleTree by Hilton properties, not a chain-wide collapse. DoubleTree is primarily a franchised and licensed system, so a franchisee’s property distress or closure does not automatically indicate trouble across the brand.
For example, TheStreet reported that the downtown Cleveland DoubleTree was scheduled to close on January 30, 2026. It reported a 58.5% decline in that property’s loan valuation—from $40 million to $16.6 million by February 2024—and 27.58% occupancy there in May 2025, citing CoStar service reports. Those figures describe one property and cannot be applied to DoubleTree or Hilton as a whole. The report also discussed other DoubleTree property closures while noting the distinction between local financial problems and systemic brand trouble. TheStreet’s report
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To judge whether a chain itself is in serious decline, look for company-wide evidence rather than a list of closed hotels: revenue and comparable-property RevPAR trends, liquidity and debt disclosures, restructuring or bankruptcy filings, net brand openings versus exits, and franchisee defections. Compare the same time period and geography, and separate parent-company results from individual property outcomes. The SEC filing reviewed for Choice Hotels, for example, describes franchising as its primary operation; that business model helps explain why a brand portfolio is not the same as ownership of every hotel, but it does not support a claim that Choice is near failure. Choice Hotels’ 2025 Form 10-K
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- Suitable Size: 3.5" L x 1.8" W. Lightweight and easy to fit on any item without adding extra burden or bulk. Great for decorating your keys, backpacks, luggage, zippers, etc. And the rhombic design adds a retro touch to the item
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Why the distinction matters to travelers and investors
- For travelers: a familiar brand’s disappearance from a location may mean a sale, rebranding, or franchise change—not necessarily that the building closed.
- For investors: a distressed individual hotel is not enough to infer distress at its franchisor or parent company. Check the entity named in the financial evidence and whether the figures are property-level or system-wide.
- For historical lists: specify whether the restaurant business, hotel brand, operating company, or individual property ended. Without that distinction, “defunct chain” can overstate what happened.
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