insurance policy's renewal date.

Approved Suppliers

To facilitate consistency and quality among Brand Hotels and our ability to leverage volume purchasing power, we reserve the right to approve or designate all vendors and suppliers of Supplies and services you use in developing, operating and promoting your Hotel. We may designate a sole supplier or approved suppliers (which may be us or our affiliates) (the "Approved Suppliers") from which you will be required to purchase certain Supplies, and you will purchase those Supplies only from the Approved Suppliers when required. You may be required to sign such Approved Suppliers' form agreements for the purchase of such Supplies or services. We will provide the list of Approved Suppliers to you. We may provide your contact information to our Approved Suppliers and you may be contacted by our Approved Suppliers. We provide access to a third-party online procurement platform customized for the Network Brands, and we may require you to make certain purchases through that platform. Although we have the right to require the platform or Approved Suppliers to charge you a 2% to 3% procurement fee, which would be remitted to us, we currently do not require them to charge such fee. We currently do not maintain any other purchasing or distribution cooperatives.

None of our officers or affiliates own a material interest in any Approved Supplier. However, from time to time, our officers may own non-material interests, for investment purposes only, in publicly-held companies that are suppliers to Brand Hotels.

Neither we nor any of our affiliates currently is an Approved Supplier, although we may designate ourselves or an affiliate as an Approved Supplier (including as an exclusive supplier). You periodically may pay us for purchases from designated third parties.

If you want to purchase goods or services from an unapproved supplier, then you may submit a written request for us to approve the supplier. You must submit to us all information,

specifications and samples that we request. Any goods or services from suppliers must be in accordance with Brand Standards. We will review all of the pertinent information. While we have no obligation to respond within a certain time frame, our review typically takes 30 days to complete. We have the right to require as a condition of our initial and continuing approval that our representatives are permitted to inspect and re-inspect the supplier's facilities, and that the supplier attend our brand conference and enter into our then-applicable supplier agreement. We currently do not charge a fee for the supplier approval process, but we may do so. We may change our approval process or supplier criteria at any time. If we approve a supplier as to any goods, services, suppliers or materials, we must grant our approval in writing. We may condition our initial and continued approval of a supplier on certain requirements, such as delivery frequency, standards of service (including prompt attention to complaints), concentration of purchases, insurance protection, the supplier's willingness to enter into indemnity and confidentiality agreements, payment of reasonable license fees (if Marks are used), and other criteria. Other than this description of our criteria, we do not disclose any further details of our criteria for approving suppliers to franchisees.

We may approve suppliers on a temporary basis and/or revoke approval of Approved Suppliers who no longer satisfy our criteria for suppliers or do not pass reinspection, and if that happens, we will provide reasonable written notice of such disapproval to you. We do not provide any material benefit to a franchisee based on a franchisee's use of designated or pre-approved suppliers, except that your purchase or lease of goods or services as required is an essential element of your compliance with the Franchise Agreement and the Brand Standards, and your failure to do so is a breach of the Franchise Agreement and may result in your loss of material benefits, up to and including the termination of the Franchise Agreement.

We may negotiate purchase arrangements with Approved Suppliers, which we currently anticipate will be volume-based pricing. We may receive volume-based allowances from certain Approved Suppliers with whom we have negotiated contracts, generally as a percentage of net or gross sales made by franchisees or by Network Hotels we own or manage. The allowances we receive generally range from 1% to 4% of net or gross sales on such items as FF&E, operating/maintenance equipment and supplies, merchant processing, services, and food and beverage products from purchases made by franchisees or by Network Hotels we own or manage.

Required Purchases from Approved Suppliers

You must install, display, and maintain signage displaying or containing the Marks and other distinguishing characteristics in accordance with Brand Standards we establish for Brand Hotels. You must purchase the signage for your Hotel from an Approved Supplier. There may be only one Approved Supplier for various Supplies, which may include us or an affiliate.

Most of the equipment and supplies you must purchase to establish and operate your Hotel must meet our Brand Standards and other brand defining standards, and some must be purchased from an Approved Supplier, and in some cases, only one Approved Supplier. Currently, this includes most FF&E, OS&E, and other operating supplies such as food products. Any equipment and supplies for which we have not designated an Approved Supplier may be purchased from any supplier as long as the equipment and supplies meet Brand Standards.

You must use the booking engine we designate, participate in all booking programs we designate through the booking engine, and may not use any other booking engine for your Hotel.

Source: Item 8 — RESTRICTIONS ON SOURCES OF PRODUCTS AND SERVICES (FDD pages 42–46)