Oct. 15, 2009 (PR Newswire) --

SILVER SPRING, Md., Oct. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE: CHH), one of the world's leading lodging franchisors, has been selected as one of the top 50 franchises for minorities by the National Minority Franchising Initiative (NMFI), an organization which serves to expand the number of minorities in franchising, for the third consecutive year. According to NMFI's official selections, recently published in the annual USA Today - Franchising Today, Choice Hotels was yet again chosen based on the company's continued commitment to the recruitment and advancement of minorities within the Choice Hotels system and the hospitality industry overall.

"We are extremely honored to receive this recognition for the third consecutive year," said Brian Parker, vice president of emerging markets and new business development for Choice Hotels. "Diversity and inclusion is vital to our organization's success and long-term growth therefore we are fully committed to the recruitment, development, and retention of our minority franchisees."

Reviewed among hundreds of other franchising companies, the NMFI chose Choice Hotels as one of its elite 50 organizations based on the company's overall minority recruitment program, the percentage of minority franchisees currently within the Choice Hotels system, and the percentage of minorities in key positions within corporate management. Other selection factors utilized by the NMFI in their selection process included market dynamics, franchisee satisfaction, brand identification, on-going support, financial stability and historical performance.

"We are extremely pleased to see that, even in this poor economy, so many franchisors still have an active interest in attracting more minority franchisees," said NMFI Co-Founder Rob Bond. "Given this huge underserved market, there is still a great deal of work that has to be done to bring minorities up to parity with the market."

Giving Choice Hotels its edge over the competition was the company's emerging markets and new business development team, which has worked to steadily increase the number of minority Choice Hotels franchisees over the past few years.