Louvre Hotels is to expand in south-east Asia, beginning with the recent signing of two hotels in Thailand’s resort destination of Pattaya. The hotel group, which is owned by Starwood Capital and run by Barry Sternlicht, is aiming for a different strategy in Asia compared to other countries.Currently Louvre Hotels is opening three different offices in Asia, in India, Shanghai in China and Bangkok in south-east Asia. This year the group will be opening hotels in Thailand including the Golden Tulip Resort Pattaya, Golden Tulip Erawan Hotel (Pattaya), Tulip Inn Lumpini Park (Bangkok) and Golden Tulip Madison Suites Bangkok.
Two weeks ago Louvre Hotels also took over the marketing and management of Golden Tulip Mangosteen Resort & Spa in Pattaya. The plan is for the group to open and manage even more Golden Tulip brands in capital cities and secondary cities that are in business centre locations, while Golden Tulip Hotels will be use for prime resort destinations in South East Asia.
Golden Tulip Group has four international brands – Tulip Inn offers comfortable three-star accommodation in convenient locations, Golden Tulip Hotels are four-star hotels with international standard of comfort, Tulip Residence offer service apartments and Royal Tulip Hotels are five-star hotels offering elegant and luxurious facilities.
Golden Tulip already boasts more than 213 hotels in 37 countries with 25,600 rooms. Golden Tulip South East Asia, managing director, Mark van Ogtrop said the signing of the Phuket and Pattaya hotels displayed the strong intentions of the company to the travel industry that it was putting serious resources into finding partners in the region as it seeks more hotels to manage.
“We have a mandate to expand the brand in South-east Asia and these three properties in Phuket and Pattaya signal a significant start to this strategic process and we have some exciting announcements about more hotels to be made in the very near future. Obviously Thailand, with its robust travel industry is a key target for us, but we are also looking at properties in Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia and Indonesia and are already talking to a number of property owners and developers.”
Carmen Allan
