Great concern, personal approach
Mister de Haas is a man that by now has won his spurs in the hotel industry. After the hotel management school in Maastricht he has worked in the Dutch Antilles, Mercure Amsterdam, Novotel Eindhoven and Mercure Breda. “With pleasure I do my work for Mercure, an associate of the Accor-group” starts De Haas. “Accor is the powerful parent company with establishments all over the world among which, beside Mercure, the concerns Sofitel, Novotel, Suitehotel, Ibis, Etap save hotel, Formula 1, Motel 6 and Roof Inn and related activities such as travel offices, restaurants (LenÔtre) and casino’s. It is a large concern that operates in different market segmentations with several market formulas. In addition we are the European market leader. But in spite of operating on such a large scale, the personal approach is one of our most important characteristics.”
Ambassadors
When asking mister de Haas about his vision on a good hotel, he reacts firmly: “I want to make all guests an ambassador of our hotel. At the end, word-of-mouth publicity works the best. Satisfied guests recommend the hotel to acquaintances or colleagues and thereby people will talk with appreciation about our hotel. It sounds like an honourable intention, but if you want to realize that you must have attention for details”. And that, we have experienced when arriving at the Mercure Arnhem. A petit four on the counter, clear signposting, professionally arranged rooms and a more than friendly welcome. “That is correct” mister de Haas answers. “We want to put our guests immediately at ease. “
Business orientated
“Our customer mix is 70% business and 30% leisure.” mister de Haas continues. “That means we must focus our approach primarily on the professional business market. And I clearly want to emphasize that professional is different from cold. I want our guests to remember our hotel and at arrival already experience something like: ‘Wow!’. Business guests appreciate service and do not want to leave anything to coincidence. That is also one of the reasons why we focus on hospitality, ambiance and well-equipped training and meeting rooms. In Legamaster we have found a good partner to support us.” explains mister de Haas. “If you see how Legamaster has provided our meeting rooms with presentation equipment, it perfectly fits our strategy. Professional and stylish!”
Quality and unity
“At Mercure we work with standards of performance, shortened SOP’s. In this we determine to which standards the hotel must suffice in criteria’s as in general, the hotel rooms and certainly also the training and meeting rooms” mister de Haas continues. “Because we work with so-called mystery shoppers, it can be very confronting. But we learn from this. We ensure optimal equipment and constantly review this to a high quality level. This way there will never be any discrepancy between the Mercure hotels. The solutions that Legamaster offers are therefore very suitable for us. For example the Legamaster Flipover Taurus is used in all Mercure hotels in the Netherlands
The importance of good presentation products
Mister de Haas enthusiastically goes on: “The importance of good presentation products is underestimated. There are many trainers and companies who book a training or meeting room in our hotel. We choose only to work with the best products. During a presentation nothing is more annoying than a boardmarker that no longer works or running out of the flipchart paper or not being able to dry-wipe a whiteboard clean. That creates small irritations and gives the company a bad name. We have regular clients consisting out of coaches and trainers, who specifically choose to organize their trainings and workshops in our hotel. We have noticed that the presentation products of Legamaster are an important criteria for making that choice. By committing to the A-brand Legamaster, our presentation products are a very positive USP. Certainly because the most important part of our customers are from the business segment.”
