Choice Hotels is paying about $130 million for Harvest Hosts, an RV membership club, marking the franchisor's first acquisition under new CEO Dom Dragisich and its first move outside the hotel business.

The deal values Harvest Hosts at roughly 3.5 times the $37 million that growth equity firm Stripes paid for the business in 2021. Choice is funding the purchase with cash and its revolving credit facility, and says the transaction won't materially affect this year's results.

Harvest Hosts is not a lodging business in the conventional sense. It is a subscription model. Members pay $99 to $179 a year for access to 11,200 host locations — wineries, farms, breweries, and museums — where they can park overnight. Hosts collect nothing for the overnight stays. All revenue comes from the membership fee.

The company says its community now tops 500,000 RVers, and that those members have spent more than $200 million at host businesses since 2010. That spending record is the commercial engine behind the network: hosts participate not for parking revenue but for the traffic members bring to their tasting rooms, farm stands, and gift shops.

Harvest Hosts keeps its brand and continues as a standalone business. CEO Joel Holland stays on.

Choice has laid out a loyalty-driven rationale for the deal. The company says members of its loyalty program over-index among RV travelers, giving it a natural base to sell the subscription product to. It has not said how it will market to that base.

The acquisition also puts Choice into the outdoor lodging race — last among the big four U.S. franchisors. Hilton partnered with AutoCamp. Hyatt backs Under Canvas. Marriott bought Postcard Cabins and Trailborn, which it has since bundled into an Outdoor Collection by Marriott Bonvoy. Choice is the only one of the four entering through a membership club rather than a portfolio of physical accommodations, a structure that shifts the economics from occupancy and average daily rate to subscription growth and retention.

The price multiple tells its own story about how the asset has appreciated. At $130 million against a $37 million price four years ago, Harvest Hosts roughly tripled-plus in value under Stripes' ownership, growth driven by expanding both the host network and the paying membership base.

For Choice, the bet is that its loyalty data — showing RV travelers over-indexed among its program members — can convert into subscription revenue at low acquisition cost, while the $200 million in member spending at hosts since 2010 suggests a durable, engaged community rather than a thin user base.

What remains undefined is the integration plan. Choice has not detailed cross-marketing mechanics, loyalty earn-and-burn structures for Harvest Hosts memberships, or whether the club will feed into its broader outdoor strategy alongside any future physical lodging plays. Those decisions will land on Dragisich's desk as he shapes the company's first post-hotel portfolio.