BRAVE Fields for Hospitality

Hospitality Properties and BRAVE

Hotels and hospitality properties are the most complex property type to capture in the BRAVE standard. Unlike other commercial real estate, hotels operate as businesses — their value depends on room revenue, food and beverage operations, meeting space, and ancillary services. While BRAVE captures the core income and value data, hospitality-specific metrics like RevPAR, ADR, and departmental breakdowns remain in the PDF report narrative.

This guide covers how to map hotel appraisal data to the official BRAVE fields and highlights where appraisers most commonly make errors.

Property Identification

BRAVE organizes its 99 fields into 6 official categories (Job, Property, Income, Value, Appraiser). For hospitality properties:

• Property.Type: Set to "Hospitality". Use Property.Subtype to distinguish between full-service, limited-service, select-service, extended-stay, resort, and boutique/independent.
• Property.Subtype: Brand affiliation and chain scale segment (luxury, upper upscale, upscale, upper midscale, midscale, economy). Lenders use chain scale to benchmark performance metrics.
• Property.UnitsCount: For hotels, this is the room count (Int32). This must agree with your report narrative.

Building and Site Fields

Key hospitality Property fields:

• Property.GrossBuildingArea: Total building area including guest rooms, public areas, back-of-house, and meeting space (Decimal).
• Property.BuildingsCount: Number of buildings in the complex (Int32).
• Property.FloorsCount: Number of floors/stories (Int32).
• Property.YearBuilt and Property.YearRenovated: Construction and renovation dates.
• Property.Condition and Property.Quality: Condition and quality ratings.

Note: BRAVE does not have dedicated fields for room mix, meeting space SF, F&B outlets, or other hospitality-specific physical characteristics. These details remain in the PDF report.

Income Approach

Hotel income analysis follows the Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry (USALI). BRAVE's 16 Income fields capture the summary-level data:

• Income.RentalIncome: For hotels, this captures rooms revenue (the primary revenue stream).
• Income.OtherIncome: Food and beverage, spa, parking, and other departmental revenue.
• Income.PotentialGrossIncome: Total PGI.
• Income.VacancyLoss: Vacancy/collection loss allowance.
• Income.EffectiveGrossIncome: PGI minus vacancy.
• Income.OperatingExpenses: Total operating expenses including departmental expenses and undistributed expenses.
• Income.Reserves: FF&E (furniture, fixtures, and equipment) reserve — typically 4-5% of total revenue. Use Income.ReservesIncluded to indicate whether this is included in operating expenses.
• Income.NetOperatingIncome: For hotels, this represents income after all operating expenses. Ensure your NOI and cap rate are on the same basis (before or after FF&E reserve).
• Income.OccupancyRate: Annual occupancy rate.

Note: BRAVE does not have dedicated fields for ADR, RevPAR, departmental income breakdowns, or management fees. These hospitality-specific metrics are captured in the aggregate income fields above; detailed breakdowns remain in the PDF report. The Value.FFE field in the Value section captures furniture, fixtures, and equipment value, and Value.BEV captures business enterprise value (both are manual-entry fields).

For general income field guidance, see our BRAVE Income & NOI Fields guide.

Cap Rate and Valuation

• Value.CapRate (Overall Cap Rate): Hotel cap rates are applied to NOI. Ensure your cap rate and NOI are on the same basis. The official validator enforces a 0-20% range.
• Value.DiscountRate: DCF is the predominant valuation methodology for hotels. Populate this for all DCF analyses.
• Value.TerminalCapRate: Terminal cap rate for DCF reversion.
• Value.ReconciledFinal: The final reconciled value.
• Value.FFE: Furniture, fixtures, and equipment value (Decimal).
• Value.BEV: Business enterprise value, if applicable (Decimal, manual entry).

Common Hospitality BRAVE Errors

Reserves not properly indicated. Populate Income.Reserves with the FF&E reserve amount and set Income.ReservesIncluded to indicate whether it is included in operating expenses. Omitting reserves overstates NOI.

Income field inconsistencies. Ensure Income.NetOperatingIncome equals Income.EffectiveGrossIncome minus Income.OperatingExpenses. The official validator does not enforce this cross-check, but lenders will review it.

Missing FFE value. For hotel appraisals, Value.FFE should be populated with the furniture, fixtures, and equipment value.

Use AppraisalAPI.com to validate hospitality BRAVE files before submission. For more on validation, see our BRAVE Compliance Checklist. For an introduction to the standard, read What Is BRAVE? and our guide to the 99 fields of BRAVE.