Golden Tulip plans to eventually introduce its budget brand Premier Class to the Middle East and North Africa, revealed company president Pierre Frederic Roulot,
“We are very focused on the budget segment and the mid-scale segment and this is very new in Arabic countries. They know the five star hotels and the luxury brands — but they are on the way to realising that you can make more money with the budget hotels because it’s easier,” said Roulot, speaking exclusively to Hotelier Middle East.
The company already has 250 Premier Class hotels in Western Europe and is planning to launch India’s first Premier Class hotel next year, followed by one in Morocco which will potentially be opened during 2012.
“When you look at the crisis, most of the hotels have seen a decrease in their profit, but when you have a midscale property, you have resilience with the profit and the revenue because you have a downgrading of the customer,” said Roulot.
“The future will be in the mid scale and budget hotels here [in MENA],” he asserted.
The company, which currently has 42 hotels in the Middle East, is currently focused on expanding its Golden Tulip and Tulip Inn brands.
It has added three more of its three- and four-star hotels to its portfolio this year and will have a further four more properties in the region by the end of the first quarter of 2011, said Roulet.
He added that the growth plan was a strategic one: “We don’t want to develop Premier Class first; we want to develop Golden Tulip and Tulip Inn in the Middle East because we already have a strong base with 42 hotels”.
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