Golden Tulip Hospitality Group was formed in 1962 by a group of Dutch hoteliers, with a small group of properties in the Netherlands. The group's first major expansion came in 1975, when it entered into an association with KLM, the Dutch flag carrier. This allowed the group to expand into many of KLM's destinations, spreading the chain around the world. The company went through a succession of ownership and management changes over the next couple of decades, eventually ending up in an alliance with the German TOP International to form the current Golden Tulip in 2001. The company today manages hotels around the world, some of which it owns or franchises, and others which have external ownership but strategic alliances with Golden Tulip. The current entity has worked to bring its hotels under the Golden Tulip brand, and in recent years has also begun to launch other brands for bars, clubs and loyalty programs (Golden Tulip, 2010). The company struggled, however, and went into receivership in 2009. At that point, Starwood Capital Group, an American investment firm that owns Starwood Hotels, bought 240 of the 260 Golden Tulip properties (Kar-Gupta, 2009) Current Strategy

Golden Tulip current competes as a mid-level hotel, in roughly the same space as Intercontinental, Accor and Marriott (Kar-Gupta, 2009). The company has hotels in a couple dozen countries around the world, with properties as scattered as Ghana, Kazakhstan, Thailand...

hotel, but with a primary focus on the European market. The greatest concentration of hotels is in the Netherlands. The company operates three hotel brands. The core is the Golden Tulip brand, which is a chain of 4-star hotels, with 135 hotels in 35 countries worldwide. The lower-end brand of 3-star hotels, Tulip Inn, has 75 hotels in 15 countries. Royal Tulip consists of 3 5-star hotels.
Non-Tulip brands form the bulk of the company's properties. Premiere Class features 227 hotels in the 0 to 1- star category; Campanile has 338 hotels in the 2-star market. Kyriad features 219 hotels, independently owned and primary in France, operating in the 2-3 star category. Kyriad Prestige is a 13-hotel brand extension, again focused on the French market. These different brands indicate that the company overall has no set strategic focus. Golden Tulip is instead attempting to cover a wide variety of strategies ranging from cost leadership to differentiation. The Tulip family is an attempt at creating a differentiated strategy across multiple brands and quality levels. Each of the other brands attempts to compete within its scope. All told, Golden Tulip seeks to have hotels to meet the needs of all consumers. Their lack of geographic focus relates in part to the company's history as strategic partner of KLM. The foreign hotels are generally aimed at European travelers who are already familiar with the brand, and…