Introduction and Background Franchising is a business format in which the franchisor lends its name of activities and systems to a franchisee for a fee (Alon, Ni & Wang, 2011). The motivation for franchising is embedded on the perceived benefits as a result of the competitive advantage that is accorded to both partners. The strategy has gained popularity among businesses that desire to enter the international market (Lafontaine & Blair, 2009). Through franchising, businesses achieve significant scale growth with minimal capital and reduced risks. Franchising is regarded to be an old business strategy for players in the hotel industry. The number of franchises in the hotel industry has been on an upward trend making the hotel industry among the highly franchised industries globally (Verbieren, Cools & Van den Abbeele, 2008). Franchising offers the hotel industry numerous benefits. A franchisor accords independent hotel owner instant identity, image and recognition over and above easing out the process of opening a new hotel (Burkle & Posselt, 2008). The franchisee also benefits from business growth technologies including operating systems, service reservation systems as well as marketing programs and critical finances. Franchising offers hotel business a sense of belonging and enhanced cooperation when dealing with operational issues. According to Burkle and Posselt (2008), franchising in the hotel industry, as with most other service industries, requires good navigation and appropriate corporate leadership. Franchising presents a unique set of challenges which require corporate leadership. A complete franchise has several players given that franchises adopt a plural business model of operations (Lafontaine & Blair, 2009). The players include the multi-unit franchisees with corresponding managers, master franchisees with sub-franchisees as well as the managers of the original outlets retained by the parent company (Lee, Jarvis, Kundra, Mihoubi & Grueneberg, 2012). Businesses with such a detailed model have numerous relationship issues, and hence they require corporate leadership if they are to be successful. Franchises also present other challenges such as unique legal requirements. Given that the business is in the hotel sector which is primarily service based, there is need to ensure quality. The franchisor must therefore find qualified franchisees so as to maintain the hotel image and value (Burkle & Posselt, 2008). The immediate growth that is presented by franchising can also be catastrophic if not well managed. The study aims to establish the role that corporate leadership can play to ensure the success of hotel franchise. The speed of change, as well as complexity of the current business environment in the hotel industry, requires enhanced business leadership (Burkle & Posselt, 2008). The situation is magnified in the hotel franchise business due to the interplay of different factors that are inherent to the hotel industry and those of the franchise business (Lee et al., 2012). The use of corporate leadership to steer growth in a hotel franchise varies with the franchise business model that the hotel uses. Each franchise model presents a unique set of challenges. As such, despite the