Choice Hotels International, Inc. is on track to integrate roughly 600 Radisson Americas hotels onto its reservation delivery engine and Choice Privileges loyalty program by the end of this summer.
As Choice moves forward with the integration system, its guests and franchisees across its brand portfolio have already started benefiting from the process.
Choice said in a press release that it is currently on track to meet numerous significant integration milestones ahead of schedule.
Since acquiring Radisson Americas in August 2022, Choice’s achievements include:
- Driving a turnaround of Radisson Americas’ results with anticipated revenue contribution and cost savings this year and 2024, much ahead of initial expectations.
- Status matching and transfer of points between Radisson Rewards Americas and Choice Privileges.
- Leveraging around 100 new corporate customers to boost group bookings.
- Opening seven Radisson Americas-branded properties. These include the Radisson Blu Plaza El Bosque Santiago in Chile and the Radisson Blu Vancouver Airport Hotel & Marina in Canada.
- Awarding contracts for eight more Radisson Americas-branded hotels.
- Renewing contracts or signing relicensing agreements with 27 Radisson Americas-branded properties.
- Announcing plans for a refresh of rooms of Country Inn & Suites.
- Offering franchisees of Radisson Americas access to Choice University.
Choice now plans on completing the following steps in the third quarter within one year of acquiring Radisson Americas:
- To make Radisson Americas hotels bookable on ChoiceHotels.com and sync them with the ChoiceEdge central reservations platform.
- To fully integrate the Radisson Rewards Americas loyalty program with the Choice Privileges program.
- To migrate eligible Radisson Americas properties to the choiceADVANTAGE property management system and the ChoiceMAX cloud-based revenue management system.
The full integration of the nearly 600 hotels will help Choice drive their profitability and performance to the next level, said Pat Pacious, Choice Hotels president and CEO. “Our proven expertise in integrating hotel brands is enabling us to complete the onboarding of the Radisson Americas properties onto our industry-leading business platform well ahead of plan.”
Following the enhancements made to the Radisson Americas website, there has already been an increase in direct bookings. This has provided benchmarking data and profitability consultations to further ramp up revenue, said Bob Patel, owner of four Country Inn & Suites hotels.
“Choice is clearly a company that’s committed to providing franchisees like me with the tools, resources and support we need to succeed, and I can’t wait to have my properties on their platform,” Patel said.
Before acquiring and integrating Radisson Americas, Choice acquired the extended-stay brand WoodSpring Suites in 2018 and created a new development model for the brand. This streamlined operational costs and helped bring projects to market quickly.
With 12 hotels opened year-to-date (including six in May, a record for the brand), WoodSpring Suites is currently expanding across the U.S. and has 300 additional properties in the pipeline.
A leading lodging franchisor, Choice presently has over 7,400 hotels totaling more than 625,000 rooms under 22 brands across 45 countries.