Number of hotels in France: 17,500 in 2026

How many hotels? It depends on your question#

The right answer depends on your question. To size the market, use 17,500. For a list of rated hotels, use 13,277, with known room counts. For an offer aimed at the people who run hotels, the benchmark is about 11,300 independent hotels, or 13,808 if the offer also targets members of a consortium such as Logis, who also decide for their own hotel. For an offer negotiated with head offices, use the 97 chains. For a list drawn from the activity code alone, expect a little over 2 rows for 1 hotel in operation.

About these figures: the total of 17,500 combines rated hotels listed in the register with an estimate of unrated hotels. Room counts, operators, and geographic breakdowns cover rated hotels, the only ones described individually. Each table specifies its base.

Who decides, and how do you reach a hotel?#

Most hotels are independent: with no chain, franchise, or consortium, the person who runs the hotel decides alone. Even within a network, sales often happen hotel by hotel: the 1,005 Logis hotels linked to the registry are run by 998 companies. The companies that operate hotels are mostly SAS (French simplified joint-stock companies, 53.3%) and SARL (French limited liability companies, 38.5%).

Who you talk to depends on the setup:

• Independent hotel: your contact is the person who runs the company.
• Franchise: each operator decides, within the brand's rules.
• Company-owned chain: the head office decides for all its hotels.
• Consortium such as Logis or Best Western: each member decides, within the network's rules.

A good list identifies each hotel's setup and operating company. It starts with the 17,500 hotels in operation rather than registry entries. Filter first by whether the hotel is rated (the 13,277 rated hotels are described individually; the estimated 4,200 unrated hotels are not), then by category and size: a 5-star hotel with more than 100 rooms and a 1-star hotel with fewer than 20 rooms have different budgets and needs.

Of the 13,277 rated hotels, 11,763 (88.6%) have a phone number on their public business listings, in professional directories, or on their website. 6,390 (48.1%) have an email address. 10,101 (76.1%) have a website on their public listings. 10,478 (78.9%) received an online review in the past year, a sign of recent activity. Phone is therefore the most reliable channel; email reaches nearly half of rated hotels.

To check a few hotels in your area yourself, five steps are enough:

1. Download Atout France's list of rated hotels from data.gouv.fr and filter by department (a French administrative area), star rating, and room count.
2. Read the legal notice on each hotel's website to find its operating company.
3. Look up that company in Annuaire des entreprises (the French government's free business directory): if it operates other hotels, that is one account for several hotels.
4. Set aside hotels with no online reviews in the past year: they may be closed.
5. Sort by rating date: ratings last five years (some are extended), and 4,289 rated hotels reach their renewal deadline between November 2026 and October 2027. This is a time when a hotel may review its equipment and offering.

When to call: 4,289 ratings due for renewal#

Star ratings are renewed every five years, creating a recurring milestone for hotels: 4,289 hotels rated between November 2021 and October 2022 reach that deadline between November 2026 and October 2027. Some ratings are extended beyond five years: this applies to 226 hotels, all rated in 2021, that are still listed in the register. This is a time when a hotel may review its equipment and offering.

The year of rated hotels' current star rating

Year of current star rating	Rated hotels
2021	726
2022	4,806
2023	3,017
2024	2,234
2025	1,383
2026	1,111
Total	13,277

More than 4 in 10 rated hotels (5,532) have a rating from 2022 or earlier, and the oldest ratings expire first. For an equipment supplier, these hotels are potential renovation prospects. A year-old list already contains closed locations and misses new openings.

Why does the number of hotels vary by source?#

Published hotel figures do not count the same thing. The first difference is the unit: a location, a company, a hotel open year-round, or a registry entry. The next is the scope: hotels with more than 5 rooms, rated hotels, or all locations under an activity code.

Take a simple example. A company operates several hotels under the same management. Insee, which counts companies, counts it as one. Urssaf (the agency that collects French payroll taxes) counts as many locations as there are hotels with employees. Scalon counts as many hotels as there are operating addresses. All three views are valid; they answer different questions.

There is therefore no single "correct official figure" that overrides the others. 13,277 answers "how many hotels have a current star rating?" 16,291 answers "how many tourist hotels does Insee count on January 1?" 39,496 answers "how many addresses are registered under the hotel activity code?" 17,477 answers "how many hotels can you visit, call, or prospect today?"

The figure of 17,405 hotels, often repeated online

This is a 2021 count, repeated unchanged by the Union des métiers et des industries de l'hôtellerie (UMIH) in a June 20, 2024 press release, following the 2022 Clef Verte report. Its original source has not been identified with certainty; it probably corresponds to Insee's count from early 2021. Insee counts 16,291 hotels on January 1, 2026. Calculating a change from 17,405 is meaningless: the scope of the series has changed.

What the other sources say, in detail

• Insee, hotel activity 2025: of the 14,886 hotels open on average each month, 11,710 are rated and 3,176 unrated; 618.2 thousand rooms.
• Insee, monthly series: 15,702 hotels in July 2026 for mainland France alone.
• Insee, independent hotels: the series "Nombre d'hôtels - Hôtels indépendants - France métropolitaine" gives 12,003 in July 2026. It covers only mainland France and independent hotels: it cannot be compared with the national total.
• Insee Ésane, sector 551: 20,634 companies in 2020, 21,371 in 2019.
• Coach Omnium, panorama 2026: nearly 3,200 integrated-chain hotels (19%), alongside nearly 13,000 independents (81%).

A total tells you how many hotels exist. It does not tell you which ones. A count serves as market research; a list of locations is a different deliverable.

Which NAF code applies to a hotel?#

The NAF code (the French activity classification code, also called APE code) for hotels is 55.10Z, "Hôtels et hébergement similaire," assigned to each location by Insee. It is accurate for almost all rated hotels: 8,887 of the 9,656 found in the registry fall under it (92.0%), and another 563 fall under food service, likely hotel-restaurants whose main activity is dining. See APE code, NAF code and the number of restaurants in France.

The code alone cannot identify the full market: it includes vacation centers or villages with daily housekeeping and registered locations with no visible activity, hence 39,496 rows for 17,477 hotels. A list drawn from code 55.10Z alone therefore contains a little over 2 rows for 1 hotel in operation. And on January 1, 2027, the NAF 2025 classification becomes the reference: if you compare two years, check the classification used for each.

Hotel market terms, in plain English#

Industry terms mean different things depending on who uses them. Here are the meanings used in this article.

Six ways to break down the market#

The study breaks the market into six levels, from the overall market to geographic areas, to make clear which population each figure describes. Levels 2 through 5 cover the same total, 17,477 hotels, or the 13,277 rated hotels when data is available only for them.

Chart data

Level	Count
Locations registered under the hotel activity code	39,496
Hotels in operation	17,477
Rated hotels	13,277
Independent rated hotels, not part of a chain, franchise, or consortium	7,741

Level 1: the universe of rated accommodation#

Atout France's register lists 21,371 rated accommodation properties, of which only the 13,277 tourist hotels fall within this study; campgrounds have their own article: number of campgrounds in France. Separately, the Sirene registry lists 39,496 open locations under code 55.10Z.

Rated accommodation by type

Type of rated accommodation	Count
Tourist hotels	13,277
Tourist residences	1,593
Vacation villages	535
Campgrounds	5,679
Vacation home parks	168
Hostels	119
Total	21,371

Level 2: hotels in operation#

The 13,277 rated hotels come from the register. The roughly 4,200 unrated hotels are an estimate: among 10,059 places categorized as hotels on their public listings, open and absent from the register, 38 of 91 randomly selected places reviewed individually turned out to be actual hotels. The total of 17,477 is therefore an approximate figure: between 16,512 and 18,510 depending on the places selected (95% interval). That is why the title rounds it to 17,500.

Level 3: category#

3-star hotels dominate: more than one in three hotels. Nearly one in four hotels is unrated. The high end remains a minority: 3,287 hotels with 4 and 5 stars, including 546 5-star hotels and 33 Palace hotels.

Insee shows the same ranking on January 1, 2026, with a different base: tourist hotels with more than 5 rooms, rated or unrated, excluding Mayotte. In its figures too, 3-star hotels account for 38% of hotels, and more than one in five hotels is unrated. Insee counts 3,509 unrated hotels, compared with Scalon's estimate of about 4,200 (between 3,200 and 5,200): our unrated hotels include those with 5 rooms or fewer, which Insee excludes, and Insee's date is in January.

Insee's table, including rooms

Category (Insee, January 1, 2026)	Hotels	Rooms
1 star	415	19,845
2 stars	3,044	107,097
3 stars	6,235	265,686
4 stars	2,587	170,307
5 stars	501	29,756
Unrated	3,509	67,798
Total	16,291	660,489

Level 4: size#

Size is measured in rooms, for rated hotels only: the register provides room counts, while an unrated hotel's listing does not.

Half of rated hotels have 33 rooms or fewer. The market consists of small hotels: 4,002 rated hotels have 20 rooms or fewer. But large hotels carry weight: 938 hotels with more than 100 rooms (7.1% of rated hotels) account for 26.1% of rooms. For a linen or guest amenity supplier, rooms are the right unit: the 170 hotels with more than 200 rooms alone account for 9.3% of rooms.

Level 5: market structure#

For each rated hotel, Scalon checks whether it carries the brand of a chain or a consortium, and of which type: franchised chain, company-owned chain, or consortium of independent hoteliers. The 97 chains and consortia comprise 5,536 rated hotels; the others are independent.

More than one in two rated hotels is independent, but independents hold only 40.9% of rooms in rated hotels. Franchises form the largest block of chains: roughly one rated hotel in six, and nearly a third of the rooms.

Comparing hotels by star rating shows that shared brands are most common among 1-star hotels (48.7% under a shared brand, whether a chain or a consortium) and least common among 5-star hotels (27.8%); between those categories, the share does not consistently rise with the star rating: 38.5% of 2-star hotels, 44.6% of 3-star hotels.

Level 6: geography#

Île-de-France has the most rated hotels (2,362, or 17.8% of rated hotels), ahead of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (1,832) and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (1,645). Unrated hotels are not located individually: the table covers the 13,277 rated hotels.

Counts are not densities. Relative to population, rated hotels range from 8.4 per 100,000 residents in Hauts-de-France to 110.6 in Corse. Mainland France has 19.8 rated hotels per 100,000 residents. Île-de-France has 19.0, slightly below average: many hotels, but also many residents. Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur has 31.5, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes 22.3. The 169 rated hotels in overseas territories are included in the 13,277 and in the total of 17,500.

For a delivery area or a field sales team, the department matters more than the region. Paris leads with 1,591 rated hotels, or 75.6 per 100,000 residents. Corse-du-Sud is even denser: 124.2 per 100,000. By contrast, Essonne (5.8) and Seine-Saint-Denis (5.5) are among the least dense departments. Population figures are Insee's official legal population counts.

The top 15 departments

Department	Rated hotels	Per 100,000 residents
Paris	1,591	75.6
Alpes-Maritimes	500	44.3
Bouches-du-Rhône	394	18.9
Haute-Savoie	387	44.9
Var	367	32.8
Savoie	342	76.3
Pyrénées-Atlantiques	275	38.9
Gironde	260	15.4
Rhône	248	13.0
Bas-Rhin	229	19.7
Hérault	222	18.0
Calvados	221	31.2
Charente-Maritime	214	31.8
Corse-du-Sud	209	124.2
Ille-et-Vilaine	208	18.6

Independents, chains, franchises: who holds the market?#

For anyone selling to hotels, market structure tells you who decides: the person who runs an independent hotel, the head office of a company-owned chain, each franchisee, or each consortium member within its network. Scalon calls a hotel independent when it belongs to no chain, franchise, or consortium.

Independents. 7,741 of the 13,277 rated hotels (58.3%) carry the brand of no chain or consortium; they hold 40.9% of rooms in rated hotels. Of these, 463 are operated alongside other hotels by the same company or under the same website, without a shared brand. For unrated hotels, the brand was checked on a random sample: 32 of the 38 unrated hotels in the sample display none, giving about 3,537 unrated independents. France therefore has about 11,300 independent hotels (calculation: 11,278, between 10,370 and 12,307), or 64.5% of the 17,477.

Consortia. 2,088 rated hotels belong to a consortium of independent hoteliers (Logis, Best Western, The Originals, Brit Hotel): each keeps its own company and buys for its own hotel, within the network's framework. With an estimated 442 unrated hotels (4 of the 38 reviewed), that makes about 2,500 consortium hotels (2,530, 14.5% of the 17,477).

Integrated chains. Franchised chains, company-owned chains, and chains of undetermined type account for 3,448 rated hotels (26.0%) and 48.4% of rooms; these 3,448 include the 453 hotels in chains whose type is undetermined.

The industry counts differently: Coach Omnium and Insee count consortium members as independents and set apart only integrated chains. On that basis, Scalon counts 9,829 rated hotels outside integrated chains (74.0%, 51.6% of rooms) and 13,808 in total, including unrated hotels (79.0% of the 17,477, between 12,860 and 14,842).

This definition lets you compare Scalon with public benchmarks, provided you keep the same base. Insee counts 3,634 chain hotels in 2025 out of 14,886 open on average each month (24.4% of hotels and 48.8% of rooms), including unrated hotels. Coach Omnium counts nearly 3,200 integrated-chain hotels (19% of hotels, 41% of rooms) and nearly 13,000 independents. On the same base, all hotels in operation, Scalon counts about 3,700 integrated-chain hotels, or 21.0% of the 17,477: between Insee and Coach Omnium. Our 13,808 hotels outside integrated chains exceed Coach Omnium's "nearly 13,000" by about 6%: we also count hotels with 5 rooms or fewer.

Size also separates these groups. On average, a rated integrated-chain hotel has 85 rooms, a consortium member 31, and an independent 32. Coach Omnium finds the same gap: 85 rooms for chains, 26 for independents. A chain hotel therefore has more than two and a half times as many rooms as an independent, and purchasing decisions often happen higher in the organization.

The market is fragmented. The 5 largest sets of hotels linked by a brand, website, or company comprise 3,698 rated hotels (27.9%), and the 10 largest comprise 4,590 (34.6%).

Which are the largest chains, and who operates their hotels?#

Scalon identifies 97 chains: sets of 3 hotels or more, in at least 2 municipalities, that carry a brand, or networks whose link is established by the registry. They comprise 5,536 rated hotels. The type points to the likely contact, which should be verified: the head office for company-owned chains, each operator for a franchise, each member for a consortium.

A chain is classified as a franchise when its hotels belong to several companies and a public page from the network confirms that model. It is company-owned when a public page from the group says it owns its hotels, or when all its hotels belong to the same company or to a group verified in the registry. It is a consortium when a public source says it brings together independent hotels. When the sources do not settle the question, we write "type undetermined": this applies to 57 chains, but they comprise only 453 hotels. Marriott is among them because the public pages reviewed do not say whether its French hotels are franchised or managed. So is Hilton, for lack of a breakdown for France: it uses a mixed model, with franchised hotels and others it owns or manages. Many chains also use mixed models: Accor expands mainly through franchising and management, B&B Hotels primarily operates its own hotels, with 97 franchised hotels out of 439 in June 2025, and Louvre Hotels Group combines franchises, subsidiaries, and management contracts.

Here are the largest hotel brands. Three brands are tied for tenth place. Operating companies are those of hotels linked to the Sirene registry.

The chart shows the number of companies relative to the number of hotels linked to the registry, the only population for which companies are counted: the share of hotels linked varies by brand (two in three hotels for Accor, more than nine in ten for Logis), but almost every brand has one company per hotel.

Chart data

Brand	Rated hotels	Hotels linked to the registry	Operating companies	Companies per 100 linked hotels
Accor	1,578	1,049	890	85
Logis Hotels	1,084	1,005	998	99
B&B Hotels	445	171	154	90
Best Western	316	253	240	95
Campanile	275	128	125	98
Kyriad	270	166	160	96
The Originals	237	178	175	98
Brit Hotel	172	117	115	98
Première Classe	146	68	65	96
Marriott	67	53	50	94
Teritoria	67	63	62	98
IHG	67	39	38	97

Hotels sharing a brand do not necessarily share a buyer. At Accor, 890 companies operate the 1,049 hotels linked to the registry, out of 1,578 rated hotels. At Logis Hotels, 998 companies operate 1,005 linked hotels: almost one company per hotel. One company per hotel does not mean one owner per hotel: at B&B Hotels, which says it owns most of its hotels, 154 companies operate the 171 linked hotels. For anyone selling to hotels, the network's head office is not enough. An agreement signed at headquarters does not mean every operator has agreed, except in company-owned chains, where the head office decides.

Brands belonging to the same group can be combined. Accor's brands comprise 1,578 rated hotels. Groupe Logis Hotels (Logis, Teritoria, Citotel, Demeures & Châteaux, Singuliers) comprises 1,221. Louvre Hotels Group (Campanile, Kyriad, Première Classe, Golden Tulip) comprises 714. Louvre Hotels Group has been a subsidiary of Jin Jiang International since 2015. B&B Hotels has 445.

A public benchmark for comparison. According to the trade press, Accor is estimated to have around 1,700 hotels in France (an approximate figure, not published by Accor), Louvre Hotels Group has more than 900 according to its September 2026 brochure, and B&B Hotels between 439 and 445. Best Western France reports more than 300 hotels, and Groupe Logis Hôtels more than 2,000 properties in 9 countries, with no figure for France. These public figures include unrated hotels and recent openings; ours cover rated hotels only. They agree on the approximate scale, with a larger gap for Louvre Hotels Group.

Behind the brands, there are also groups of companies. On November 6, 2026, Scalon traced parent-subsidiary links in the business register for the 289 companies operating B&B Hotels properties and hotels in chains of undetermined type with 5 hotels or more. The register confirms 104 groups, including 46 controlled by the same person. 60 of these groups comprise at least 2 rated hotels: 327 hotels operated by 280 companies.

These groups do not stick to a single brand: 36 of them operate hotels under at least two brands. The largest comprises 19 rated hotels, including 13 under an Accor brand; another comprises 16, under Accor, Kyriad, and IHG brands. For a supplier, these are distinct accounts: a single contact for several hotels and several brands. This review covers only part of the networks: these figures are minimums.

What account size should you target? Revenue#

The "Hôtels et hébergement similaire" sector generated €12.8 billion in revenue excluding tax in 2021, according to Insee (20,734 companies), but 2021 was a pandemic year: the sector generated €10.4 billion in 2020 and €18.6 billion in 2019, so this figure is not a benchmark for a normal market. Do not divide it by the number of hotels: the 20,734 companies are not all hotels, and some operate several.

To work out what account size your offer targets, it is better to look at the companies themselves. Scalon linked rated hotels to their operating companies and reviewed the published financial statements of 2,215 accommodation companies whose latest fiscal year ended in 2024 or later and whose revenue was nonzero. That is about one in four accommodation companies linked to rated hotels (2,215 out of 8,255); the others do not publish recent financial statements usable for this analysis. Half earn less than €1.9 million a year. A quarter earn less than €1.1 million, and a quarter more than €3.6 million.

These companies' combined revenue reaches €10.5 billion. It is highly concentrated: the 10 largest companies generate 19.5% of the total, and the largest 10% generate 59.5%. For anyone selling linen, equipment, or software, the typical account size is €1 million to €5 million: six in ten companies fall in that range (29.1% plus 31.7%).

Account size rises with the hotel's star rating. Among the 1,568 companies that operate just one rated hotel, half earn less than €1.7 million. For 1-star hotels, half of the operating companies generate less than €0.7 million in revenue; for 5-star hotels, that threshold rises to €8.6 million:

For companies operating a single hotel outside integrated chains (1,044, consortium members included), the halfway point is roughly €1.5 million in revenue, compared with €2.1 million for those operating a single integrated-chain hotel (524): chain hotels are larger, and so are their revenues. Read this cautiously: this is the company's revenue, not just the hotel's. A company operating several hotels reports the total.

What do hotels offer? Specialties#

A hotel sells more than rooms. Scalon recorded the services offered by the 11,744 rated hotels with a public listing, based on their listing category and booking page categories. A hotel may offer several services, so the shares do not add up to 100%.

Restaurants lead by a wide margin: 4,214 rated hotels, or 35.9% of those with a public listing. Next come meetings and events (1,264), bars (1,212), and spa and wellness (1,036). For anyone selling kitchen equipment, drinks, meeting room equipment, or spa equipment, each of these services defines a target segment.

Chart data

Advertised service	Rated hotels	Share of the 11,744 rated hotels with a public listing
Restaurant	4,214	35.9%
Meetings and events	1,264	10.8%
Bar	1,212	10.3%
Spa and wellness	1,036	8.8%
Extended stays, apartments	707	6.0%
Pool	291	2.5%
Resort	203	1.7%
Gym	137	1.2%
Golf	42	0.4%

Services are not mutually exclusive: a hotel may appear in several rows, so the shares do not add up to 100%.

Among rated hotels with a public listing, more than one in three advertises a restaurant: the hotel market overlaps with food service, with about 4,200 rated hotel-restaurants. A food wholesaler or point-of-sale software vendor cannot ignore these locations.

The high end adds services. Among the 481 5-star hotels with a public listing, 226 advertise a spa or wellness area. 33 hotels hold the Palace distinction (Atout France, 2026 collection), including 13 in Paris. Spas remain a niche market: about 1,000 rated hotels, far behind restaurants. Extended stays and apartments (707 hotels) and resorts (203) form small but highly specialized submarkets: their needs for equipped kitchens, housekeeping, and management software differ from those of a short-stay hotel.

Hotel submarkets#

A supplier targets a submarket rather than "hotels" as a whole. Here are the most useful ones, with their counts and bases.

Two neighboring markets have their own articles: the number of campgrounds in France for outdoor accommodation, and the number of restaurants in France for dining, which 4,214 rated hotels also offer.

Is the market changing? Openings, closures, and overnight stays#

The hotel stock counted by Insee is shrinking: in the same monthly series, France had 16,414 hotels open in July 2022 and 15,945 in July 2026, or 469 fewer in four years. A count is a snapshot at a given date. It does not say how many hotels closed during the year. The Sirene registry does date every opening and closure: from October 2025 to September 2026, it records 2,572 openings and 2,171 closures of locations under code 55.10Z, a net gain of +401. This code includes locations that are not hotels, and a registry closure also counts a hotel taken over under a new number. The hotel stock changes little, but it does change.

Financial difficulties are increasing. In Bodacc (France's official gazette of business notices), 315 hotel companies entered insolvency proceedings from October 30, 2025, to October 29, 2026, compared with 254 a year earlier.

Star ratings also create a recurring milestone: 4,289 ratings expire by October 2027 (see "When to call" above).

Overnight stays show the scale of your customers' activity: 220.2 million overnight stays in 2025, a record (Insee), meaning rooms to maintain, linen to wash, and breakfasts to serve. The detailed hotel stock by region and department appears in Insee's publication "Capacité des hôtels et campings en 2026."

How can you use these figures for market research?#

Size the market. An offer for all hotels starts with 17,500; for rated hotels, with 13,277 and their 606,079 rooms. An offer sold to the people who run hotels uses about 11,300 independent hotels, or 13,808 hotels outside integrated chains if it also targets consortium members. An offer sold to head offices uses the 97 chains and consortia and their 5,536 rated hotels.

Segment. Cross-reference category, size, and market structure: you do not approach an independent 3-star hotel with 21 to 50 rooms the same way as a hotel with more than 100 rooms in a franchised chain. The 938 hotels with more than 100 rooms account for more than a quarter of rooms and form a distinct target segment.

Choose an area. Compare counts relative to population to assess two areas: Paris has 75.6 rated hotels per 100,000 residents, Seine-Saint-Denis 5.5.

Track a changing market. The market keeps renewing itself: 2,572 openings and 2,171 closures in a year, 4,289 ratings due for renewal in the next twelve months. A study needs a date and regular updates. The Observatory publishes its counts with their dates and methods.

Frequently asked questions#

How many independent hotels are there in France?#

About 11,300 hotels are outside any chain, franchise, or consortium, including 7,741 rated hotels. If Logis or Best Western members are also counted as independents, as the industry does, the figure rises to 13,808, including 9,829 rated hotels. Insee counts a monthly average of 11,253 in 2025, and Coach Omnium nearly 13,000.

How many hotel chains are there in France?#

Scalon counts 97, comprising 5,536 rated hotels: 11 franchises (2,425 hotels), 17 company-owned networks (570), 12 consortia (2,088), and 57 chains of undetermined type (453). Integrated chains alone account for 3,448 rated hotels.

How many hotel franchises are there in France?#

11 chains operating under a shared brand are franchises, comprising 2,425 rated hotels. Accor is the largest, with 1,578 rated hotels; mixed-model chains are classified by their main type.

How many 5-star and Palace hotels are there in France?#

546 5-star hotels in Atout France's register as of November 2, 2026, including 33 with the Palace distinction (13 in Paris). Insee counts 501 5-star hotels on January 1, 2026.

How much revenue does a hotel earn?#

Revenue is not available hotel by hotel: financial statements report company totals, and half of the 2,215 accommodation companies that publish them generate less than €1.9 million a year. For a company operating a single hotel, the halfway point is below €0.7 million for a 1-star hotel (only 28 companies, an approximate figure), €1.4 million for a 3-star hotel, and €8.6 million for a 5-star hotel.

Which NAF code should a hotel report?#

55.10Z, "Hôtels et hébergement similaire"; the NAF 2025 classification takes effect on January 1, 2027. 92.0% of rated hotels found in the registry fall under 55.10Z (8,887 out of 9,656), with the others mostly in food service.

Why do hotel counts differ?#

Because they count different units: hotels with more than 5 rooms (Insee, 16,291), hotels open on average each month (Insee, 14,886), rated hotels (Atout France, 13,277), employer locations (Urssaf, 17,080), registry entries (39,496), or hotels in operation (Scalon, 17,477).

How many hotel rooms are there in France?#

606,079 rooms in the 13,277 rated hotels in Atout France's register as of November 2, 2026. Insee counts 660,489 rooms in 16,291 tourist hotels on January 1, 2026, including unrated hotels.

Method#

The total comes from Scalon's database, which brings together each location's records in the Sirene registry, public business listings, online booking pages, and professional directories. Atout France's official rating register, downloaded on November 2, 2026, was matched against this database by each hotel's name and postal code, or by its website. Public listings and their categories were reviewed on November 6, 2026. Scope: tourist hotels, including overseas territories; no tourist residences, bed and breakfasts, or campgrounds. Scalon reviewed 100 randomly selected places twice, then every place counted as an unrated hotel. The calculation gives 17,477 hotels, rounded to 17,500.

Method details and limits

Unit and universe. The unit is the hotel: a location that rents rooms, identified by its public listing or its entry in the rating register. A company operating several hotels counts as that many hotels. The universe starts with the 13,277 rated hotels in the register on November 2, 2026, and places categorized as hotels on their public listings, open and absent from that register.

Total. The total adds the 13,277 rated hotels and an estimated 4,200 unrated hotels, giving 17,477. Unrated hotels are estimated from 10,059 places (public listings for open hotels, absent from the register, that received a review in the past year or are linked to an open location in the Sirene registry, after removing obvious duplicates and places matching a rated hotel): 38 of the 91 places reviewed in a random sample are actual hotels absent from the list, giving 10,059 × 38/91 = 4,200. The 95% interval runs from 3,235 to 5,233 unrated hotels, or 16,512 to 18,510 hotels in total; it covers only the randomness of the draw.

November 6 correction. The November 2 version gave 18,251, rounded to 18,300 (45 places out of 91 retained as unrated hotels). Scalon reviewed all 45 retained places again on November 6: 14 in the classification check, the other 31 afterward, with a web search for those the case file could not resolve. 7 did not qualify for the count of unrated hotels: a place name ("Huez"), a rest area where the rated hotel was already counted, a renamed rated hotel (counted twice), a tourist residence, a vacation apartment residence, a furnished tourist rental, and a Navy property reserved for eligible users. They were removed, giving 38 out of 91 and 17,477. Two places still lack evidence either way; they remain counted.

November 9 correction. The November 6 version highlighted "strictly" independent hotels, sharing no brand, website, or company with another hotel (at most 10,800, including 7,278 rated hotels), and the share of companies operating just one location (80.7%). For anyone selling to hotels, market structure is what matters: an independent hotel is now a hotel outside any chain, franchise, or consortium, about 11,300 hotels, including 7,741 rated hotels. Sharing a company or a website remains a detail: 463 of these rated hotels are operated alongside others. The counts do not change; the reading does.

Structure and brands. A rated hotel is branded if it belongs to one of the 97 chains and consortia described below; otherwise, it is independent. To measure concentration, Scalon also groups rated hotels that share a brand (the name or brand displayed on the booking page), a website domain, or a SIREN number: 7,569 groupings across the 13,277 rated hotels; 463 independent hotels belong to small networks of this kind without a shared brand. Platforms, directories, social networks, and email services do not count as a shared website. For unrated hotels, structure is not measured hotel by hotel: Scalon reviewed the 38 unrated hotels in the random sample twice (tool: Claude Haiku 5.5; agreement on the brand for 42 out of 43, before removals); 32 display no brand, 4 a consortium brand (Logis three times, Demeures & Châteaux, part of Groupe Logis), and 2 another brand (Mama Shelter, part of Accor; Petit Prix). This gives about 3,537 unrated independents, 442 consortium members, and 221 chain hotels.

The industry's definition. Integrated chains are chains operating through franchises, subsidiaries, or management contracts. Coach Omnium, which distinguishes independent hotels from integrated chains, also counts consortium members (Logis, Best Western, Brit Hotel, The Originals…) as independents. On that basis: 9,829 rated hotels, 13,808 including unrated hotels.

Chain types. A chain is a group of 3 hotels or more in 2 municipalities that share a brand, or a verified network. Its type comes from a cited public page (franchise recruitment, a cooperative, or the group that owns the hotels) or, failing that, from the companies: all hotels under the same SIREN number (or a verified group) are company-owned locations. The 57 chains of undetermined type are those for which neither the public page nor the companies settle the question.

Classification check. Scalon reviewed 100 randomly selected places twice (57 rated hotels and 43 unrated places, in proportion to the sampling frame of the November 2 version), with neither review seeing the other (tools: Claude Haiku 5.5 from Anthropic and an OpenAI model), then resolved disagreements by reviewing each case. The two reviews agree 76 times out of 100 on both questions (between 66.8% and 83.3%, 95% interval): 81 on whether to count the location as a hotel, 94 on its brand. The 57 rated hotels come from the register and are known to be hotels: errors in the total are assessed among unrated places. Of the 14 unrated places counted as hotels and reviewed again, 2 were not hotels; of the other 31, reviewed later, 5 were not hotels (see the correction above): 7 out of 45, or between 7.7% and 28.8% (95% interval), all removed from the total. Among the 100 places, 2 brands had been missed, or at most 7.0% (95% interval). Before correcting brand affiliations, 8 brands were missed among 57 rated hotels.

Companies and revenue. 9,124 companies operate the 9,656 rated hotels linked to the Sirene registry; 7,361 have only one active location (80.7%). Revenue comes from the published financial statements of 2,215 accommodation companies (activity code 55) with a fiscal year ending in 2024 or later and nonzero revenue; 1,812 companies with zero or confidential revenue and 1,662 with older fiscal years are excluded. Companies without published financial statements are not included.

Comparison with public sources. Totals are compared with Insee (Tourisme en 2026, hotel activity, sector profile 551), Urssaf, Atout France, and Coach Omnium. Openings are location creation dates; closures are the dates published by Insee through September 30, 2026. Insolvency proceedings come from Bodacc. The Sirene registry dates from November 2, 2026, and the Sirene snapshot used to link hotels to companies from September 24, 2026.

Rounding. Shares are calculated from the displayed counts and rounded to one decimal place; they do not always add up to exactly 100%.

Limits. Unrated hotels are an estimate: their size, structure, and geography are not measured individually. Two places in the random sample still lack evidence either way and remain counted. Hotels with 5 rooms or fewer may be included, whereas Insee excludes them. A hotel with two public listings that have not been merged is counted twice, and a renamed or relocated rated hotel may still be mistaken for an unrated one. A network whose hotels share no brand, website, or company is not included in the chain count. The link between a public listing and the Sirene registry is incomplete: "linked" shares are minimums. Groups and their brands (Accor, Louvre Hotels Group, B&B Hotels) come from public sources. The commands that reproduce each figure are kept with the article.

Key takeaways#

France has 17,500 hotels in operation, compared with 39,496 registry entries under the hotel activity code. Nearly two-thirds are independent, not part of a chain, franchise, or consortium; integrated chains account for about 3,700, with nearly half the rooms in rated hotels, and consortia for about 2,500. Most sales happen hotel by hotel: even under a shared brand, each franchisee or member decides for its own hotel.

For a study or a list, choose the target before the figure, keep the same denominator throughout, and date each assessment. A study needs a date and regular updates.

Cite this study#

The full citation, with counts

Scalon Observatory, "Number of hotels in France: 17,500 in 2026," November 9, 2026: 17,500 hotels in operation in France, including overseas territories (estimate: 13,277 hotels rated by Atout France as of November 2, 2026, and an estimated 4,200 unrated hotels, between 16,500 and 18,500 in total); 16,291 tourist hotels on January 1, 2026 (Insee); 39,496 open locations under code 55.10Z in the Sirene registry; about 11,300 independent hotels, not part of a chain, franchise, or consortium, and 13,808 hotels outside integrated chains; 97 chains and consortia, 5,536 rated hotels. https://scalon.fr/en/observatory/number-of-hotels-in-france

Sources#

• Tourisme en 2026, France, Insee, August 27, 2026
• Capacité des hôtels et campings en 2026, Insee, February 3, 2026
• Parc et fréquentation des hôtels, données annuelles 2025, Insee, July 23, 2026
• Nuitées totales dans l'hôtellerie, France, series 010607365, Insee, May 6, 2026
• Nombre d'hôtels - Total - France métropolitaine et départements d'outre-mer, series 010609561, Insee, updated November 6, 2026
• Nombre d'hôtels - Hôtels indépendants - France métropolitaine, series 010609564, Insee, updated November 6, 2026
• Fiche secteur 551 - Hôtels et hébergement similaire, 2021 data, Insee, March 11, 2024
• Fiche secteur 551, 2019 data, Insee, February 16, 2022
• Sous-classe 55.10Z, Hôtels et hébergement similaire, NAF rév. 2, Insee
• Hébergements touristiques classés en France, Atout France, data.gouv.fr, file downloaded on November 2, 2026
• Établissements distingués Palace, Atout France, June 2, 2026
• Nombre d'établissements employeurs et effectifs salariés du secteur privé, France entière x APE, Urssaf (open data)
• Panorama 2026 de l'hôtellerie en France, Coach Omnium, 35th edition, March 8, 2026
• Top 10 des enseignes hôtelières en France 2026 (compilation of public sources), Bargain Expertise, November 24, 2025
• Brochure Louvre Hotels Group 2026, September 2026
• Brit Hotel, chaîne volontaire
• Best Western France, coopérative d'hôteliers
• Groupe Logis Hotels
• Communiqué de l'UMIH du 20 juin 2024 (17,405 hotels)
• L'hôtellerie française dépasse pour la première fois les 220 millions de nuitées annuelles, HR-infos, February 27, 2026
• Sirene registry (Insee), Bodacc, published financial statements, public business listings and online reviews, online booking pages, professional directories, hotel websites: reviewed in the Scalon database on November 2 and 6, 2026.