Not because of an absorption but because of having taken up the region-specific franchise model, a model that now has Nordic Choice riding on Choice Hotels brands.

Radisson hotels were in the US before there were any in Scandinavia. Over a hundred years ago, some Ms Dickerson moved to the MSP area from Chicago to collect on the willed wealth from a MSP-area relative and decided to build a fancy hotel in town and name it after a French explorer named Radisson. A Swedish-American named Carlson then jumped into a business relationship with Radisson hotels in the 1960s. [Carlson was big into making money from a loyalty program, which is a story to itself, before their were airline loyalty programs.]. SAS's catering and hotel division had some hotels, but not that many before Radisson came into the picture with a franchise agreement and took a significant but still minority shareholder position in the SAS arrangement for hotels.

Radisson SAS hotels were only a fraction of the Radisson/Carlson hotel footprint in the world. Radisson SAS's predecessor SAS International hotels (before Radisson SAS hotels) were far and few between before SAS entered into a relationship with Carlson to ride on Carlson brands in Scandinavia and the rest of the EMEA. SAS's Rezidor was Rezidor (and its SAS precursors) while Carlson was Carlson and never more than a major minority shareholder in Rezidor/SAS hotels until around 2010 when Rezidor's growth in Scandinavia had already been pretty close to maxed out for years.

Relatively speaking, Radisson is less of a dominant player in the Scandinavian hotel scene now than it was 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50 years ago because the competitors have really beefed up their footprints in the region and made Radisson almost come across as a retreating has-been in some way in SAS's home markets.