Travelodge's Slow Reservation Hookup Cost It a Franchise Suit

For about six months after Robert and Janette Huber signed on as Travelodge franchisees, their 99-room hotel in Hurley, Wis., could not take bookings through Travelodge's central reservation system. A federal appeals court has now agreed that the delay cost Travelodge its right to collect.

In a nonprecedential opinion filed Nov. 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed a New Jersey district court's judgment for the Hubers. The three-judge panel found no clear error in the trial court's conclusion that Travelodge materially breached the franchise agreement by failing to integrate the hotel into its reservation system within a reasonable time. Under New Jersey law, that kind of breach relieves the other side of its own obligations.

Those obligations were not small. Travelodge, a Wyndham brand, had sued for roughly $198,000 in liquidated damages and more than $62,000 in unpaid fees after the Hubers sold the property back to its former owner in June 2018, according to VitalLaw's summary of the case.

The timeline came from Robert Huber's trial testimony, which both courts credited. The agreement was signed Nov. 17, 2017. Travelodge missed a scheduled software installation, pushing a planned January opening to March. New pre-opening requirements followed: a phone system, a management training course, new art. After Travelodge finally approved the opening in May, its website listed the wrong address and phone number. A Travelodge representative apologized to him for putting larger hotels first, Huber testified. Meanwhile the property cost about $30,000 a month to keep running.

Travelodge's central argument on appeal was that the contract set no deadline for the hookup. The panel answered with a settled rule of contract law: "where no time is fixed for the performance of a contract, by implication a reasonable time was intended." Whether several months was reasonable is a factual call, the court said, and the record supported the trial judge's answer.

The brand also pointed to a renovation checklist the owners had not finished. The trial court found that Travelodge representatives may have waived or played down some items, and that Travelodge's own conduct slowed the rest. The district court's 2025 opinion described the Hubers as first-time hotel investors held to "a dense 500-page contract whose requirements its own actions ensured could not be timely met."

Franchise agreements tend to spell out franchisee duties to the day and leave the brand's duties open-ended. This ruling does not bind future cases, but it is a clear signal that an open-ended promise is still a promise. For a hotel owner, the reservation system is much of what the fees buy, and Wyndham has lately been shedding weaker U.S. rooms while royalties rise, which puts the value delivered per room under a brighter light.

Travelodge filed suit in November 2019. Seven years later, the appeals court has sided with owners whose hotel flew the brand's flag for about a month.