Qualifications
If you search "how do I become a hotel chain owner?" you're going to get the same answer everywhere: degrees in things like business and hospitality management are nice, and some knowledge of construction management sure wouldn't hurt, but what you really need is money. Lots of it.
Forget buckets of money—you're going to need whole oil drums full of it, for two reasons. One, having lots of money impresses investors. They like to see that you have the cash to fund your start-up (source) before they give you more.
The other reason you'll need money is more obvious: it takes a lot of cash to buy property, build a hotel, decorate it, furnish it, staff it, and pay the bills that'll keep its lights on and its water running.
And that's if you're running a bare-bones joint, without complimentary all-you-can-eat brunch, an infinity pool overlooking a ruggedly gorgeous ancient valley, a full gym, and a spa with six different kinds of deep tissue massages.
And that's all for one hotel. If you want to run a whole chain of them, you'll have to do that over and over and over. Unless you have lots of funding, you're going to start feeling a sharp, stabbing pain in your wallet before too long.
Beyond literal mountains of cash, you'll need a go-get-'em attitude, the confidence to negotiate money matters all day long without losing your cool, and a squeaky-clean record. Investors do thorough background checks and if they find out that you've been sticking gum to the underside of your desk all semester, they're going to think twice about sinking money into your project.
What? You thought that would never come back to haunt you?