Message from Pat Pacious – President & Chief Executive Officer Choice Hotels International
In a time of rising wages and interest rates, you’ve asked us to lower your costs — and I am excited to share with you the many ways we are delivering. At Choice, we’re constantly working to reduce your operating costs, increase your direct bookings, and boost your profitability. With our integration of Radisson Americas now nearly complete, I want to share with you some of the amazing benefits the combination is already yielding for all of the Choice brands.
With nearly 7,500 hotels now in the Choice portfolio, we successfully negotiated a new agreement with Expedia with improved terms that are important to both organizations, driving value for your hotels. The agreement includes expanded distribution via Expedia’s Optimized Distribution program (wholesale), giving you access to members of programs such as Chase Travel and Walmart+.
And we’re just getting started — you’ll hear more in the coming weeks and months about new agreements with other major OTAs, third-party distribution channels, and travel partners that we expect will help drive even more of the right customers to your hotels, further reduce your distribution costs, and improve your bottom line.
Here are some of the other significant benefits Choice is delivering as a result of the Radisson Americas acquisition:
For the whole Choice system:
- More traffic on the Choice website and mobile apps since the digital integration than the combined traffic on ChoiceHotels.com and RadissonHotelsAmericas.com during the same timeframe last year — a period when overall travel demand was actually higher.
- Nearly 60 million Choice Privileges members and growing following the integration of Radisson Rewards Americas. Choice Privileges members are more likely to stay a second time and more likely to book direct, which means lower acquisition costs for you.
- Access to a combined total of nearly 1,000 nationally and globally managed corporate accounts, as well as more than 600 specialty accounts across government, transportation, wholesale, and more.
- New distribution channels globally, particularly for our properties in Latin America.
- Ability for Choice to further test and refine new brand concepts and programs before rolling them out to the entire system, leveraging Choice’s strategic management company and owned hotel portfolio.
For legacy Radisson Hotels Americas franchisees:
- Higher conversion rates and stronger digital and in-app performance for Radisson Americas brands following the digital integration, resulting in more, lower-cost direct bookings.
- Access to Choice’s cutting-edge cloud-based solutions — including the ChoiceMAX revenue management system and the choiceADVANTAGE property management system — for eligible properties.
- Access to Choice’s Your Key to Profit resources, including the HotStats benchmarking tool, Profit Playbook, and Choice University, the most widely awarded learning program in the hospitality industry.
- More dedicated and differentiated service and support for every segment provided by Choice area directors, revenue managers, group sales teams, and more. Our area director consultations identified opportunities for an average of $43,000 in savings per hotel in 2022.
With more hotels in the Choice family, our entire system is growing stronger together, and that’s great news for your hotel’s profitability! These are just a few of the many ways we are working to reduce operating costs for all of our brands.
Thank you, as always, for being a valued member of the Choice franchisee family. We will keep working to leverage Choice’s franchisee success system to drive more guests and deliver more value to your properties so that, together, we can continue building a tomorrow that is even better than today.