ARCADIS' real estate division in the Netherlands, together with HTC Support, a consultancy firm for the hotel and catering industry, started a program that should lead to the development of hotels and conference centers for Golden Tulip. Golden Tulip is a Dutch chain of independent franchise hotels with its head office in Amersfoort, the Netherlands. Golden Tulip TOP Hospitality Group has 45,000 rooms in 440 hotels in 51 countries, mostly situated in urban areas in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. All hotels are situated at top locations, some close to airports and access roads, others in business districts or in the vicinity of conference centers.
It is Golden Tulip's objective to open new hotels in a large number of cities. ARCADIS and HTC will search for the locations. After initial approval the locations will be further examined by both parties. Once the approval is final, project related contracts will be made per location. ARCADIS will be acting as project developer, project manager and engineer.
The search for locations started in November 2003 and within the first half of 2004 a number of investigations will be conducted of initially approved locations. Various business units of ARCADIS in the Netherlands will be involved in the future, for instance site preparation and advice in urban development.
