Dive Brief:
- Choice Hotels International has completely integrated the Radisson Hotels Americas business, transitioning nearly 600 hotels to its franchise system and digital platforms, the company announced Wednesday. The integration wrapped 16 months after Choice acquired Radisson Hotels Americas in August 2022.
- The final step of the integration process was migrating hundreds of eligible Radisson Americas hotels to Choice’s choiceADVANTAGE property management system and its ChoiceMAX cloud-based revenue management system. The completion of this step followed several other integration milestones hit ahead of schedule earlier this year, according to Choice.
- Even before the integration was complete, the combined business began delivering “significant benefits” to Choice hotel owners and operators, the company said. Choice’s CEO Patrick Pacious previously asserted that the company’s integration of Radisson Americas indicates a Choice-Wyndham merger would be successful.
Dive Insight:
With the Radisson Hotels Americas integration, Choice is “well-positioned to further help reduce [its] franchisees’ costs, continue to boost their profitability, and help drive their performance to the next level,” Pacious said in a statement.
Since the digital migration, total traffic, bookings and booked revenue on ChoiceHotels.com are up 4%, 5% and 3%, respectively, and mobile app traffic has “increased significantly,” according to Choice.
As of November, RevPAR for the legacy Radisson Americas brands was up 2.3% year over year, and RevPAR for the Radisson upscale brand was up 8.6% year over year.
The integration also expanded the Choice Privileges reward program by more than 63 million members, Choice said, driving lower acquisition costs for franchisees.
Portfolio-wide, the integration drove a “record quarter of financial growth” in Q3 of this year, Pacious said during a November earnings call. He added that the success of the Radisson deal indicates that a Choice-Wyndham merger could go smoothly and benefit both companies’ stakeholders.
In a Wednesday statement, Pacious reiterated these sentiments, though he did not mention Wyndham specifically. “Completing the integration in such a short amount of time is a testament to Choice’s experience and unrivaled expertise in acquiring and integrating hotel brands,” he said.
Some industry players, including Asian American Hotel Owners Association President and CEO Laura Lee Blake, have criticized the Radisson integration, though, saying it wasn’t as smooth as Choice lets on. Blake previously told Hotel Dive that rockiness with the Radisson deal has left AAHOA fearful of how a Choice-Wyndham merger would affect franchisees.
The potential merger currently hangs in the balance. Earlier this week, Choice made another public offer to acquire its peer, though Wyndham — which has rejected all other proposals made thus far — said the latest offer “appears unchanged” from Choice’s previous bid. Choice simultaneously confirmed that it’s preparing to nominate directors to Wyndham’s board, in a move to skirt Wyndham’s current leadership.
