I don’t see how this can be true. A half decent hotel in even cheaper parts of the US is going to cost $100k per key, and in any popular city, multiples more. Plus, if you want to buy a franchise from Hilton/Marriott/Hyatt, they are going to ask one of the owners to already have another hotel as a credit check.

Buying a house or condo, on the other hand, only requires a few hundred thousand, outside of the most expensive areas.

And building a hotel is a completely different ballgame than buying an existing property. Cities long ago stopped approving small motels to be built, and clearing the permits/buying the land/getting a construction loan/ensuring your GC does the job on time is a whole lot of risk.