UK SALES teams at Jarvis Hotels are being trained to sell Golden Tulip Worldwide properties as part of an initiative to strengthen the partnership between the two groups.
Under an alliance agreement signed in November 1995, Golden Tulip has provided worldwide sales, marketing and reservations services to the UK group while Jarvis has featured some Golden Tulip properties in its short-break brochure and directory.
But Golden Tulip marketing director Ruth Dawson said it was keen to capitalise on the close relationship between the chains to increase awareness of the Golden Tulip brand in the UK.
“Jarvis has a huge sales force of 36 people. I think that must be one of the largest sales teams for a hotel group of its size,”she said.
“We believe there are great opportunities there for us to work more closely with Jarvis. They get the worldwide exposure and we are better branded in the UK.”
Golden Tulip is running training sessions to teach Jarvis staff about the brand, which has 370 properties worldwide.
Dawson said although Golden Tulip was well known among the major business travel consortia, it was not particularly known by the rest of the travel trade.
It is encouraging Jarvis to place more emphasis on its affiliation with Golden Tulip when it makes sales calls to agents.
At present, joint branding is used in Golden Tulip’s directory but not in Jarvis’s owndirectory.
Apart from Jarvis’s 64 properties, Golden Tulip has only two properties in the UK – the Chelsea and the Park Consul, both in London.
The majority of its European properties are in The Netherlands, where it has 80 hotels. It currently has 35 in Germany, 32 in France and 30 in Italy.
Dawson said development would be focused in Germany, France and Italy but the group would also consider opportunities in the UK.