The amount of hotels belonging to a certain franchise is significantly lower in Europe in comparison to the rest of the world and franchising or in general the American Way of doing business is not well received in Scandinavia.
One should also not underestimate that the markets are very small, the unions are very strong and economies of scale are tough to achieve, a very important factor in hotel management today, Cluster Management and EOS in Advertising have become more and more important over the last years.
Based on various sources, you carry a cost disadvantage of between 6 and 15 % while belonging to a certain chain ( using their booking engines, paying for the loyalty schemes, bureaucratic costs etc. )
Considering the poor margins in most of Europe, many managers running a hotel also state that these additional costs cannot be recouped while operating under the flag of a chain hotel, especially considering that you can be listed in various booking engines running from Sabre or Amadeus to hrs.com at a significantly lower cost.
Will be interesting to see how SPG can spread its limited service brands Element and Aloft all around Europe, Hilton did not really gain a lot of ground with their limited service brands so far and at least in the beginning ( more than 10 years ago...) they were trying hard...