Dodávatelia
Martijn Mulder, Director of Sales & Marketing, Sheraton Bratislava Hotel
Martijn Mulder has beenstanding behind the scenes of success of Sheraton Bratislava Hotel since its pre-opening stage. With his educational background of Hotelschool The Hague (a member of prestigious Leading Hotel Schools of the World) and over 10 years of experience within Starwood Hotels & Resorts, two years ago he accepted a challenge to bring well-known Sheraton hotel brand to Slovakia.
His enthusiasm and creative approach to sales, marketing and partnerships building is reflecting itself in growing client base for not only new Sheraton hotel but destination of Bratislava as well.
Career in hospitality
Hospitality industry was a clear choice for Martijn: ´Since I was young I always had a feeling I wanted to work in hospitality, so I went to hotel school in the Hague.´ He started to look for practical experiences as a teenager working in restaurants, followed by first official experience in a hotel in Amsterdam, where he had an opportunity to work at different departments. Martijn Mulder finished his University studies in 2 and a half year only and started his successful career in Starwood hotels at Groups & Events department of Starwood Schiphol Airport Hotel and Pulitzer Hotel in Amsterdam.
After Starwood opened another hotel in Rotterdam, Martijn Mulder joined the sales team of new Westin Rotterdam, where he decided to move his career forward ´I wanted to go to field sales where I could meet more people outside of the hotel. Within Westin I grew up to be a Director of Sales & Marketing and when Starwood bought another hotel in the Hague I was responsible for Sales & Marketing for both of the hotels.´ With Starwood hotel collection in Netherlands growing, Martijn eventually became in charge of Sales & Marketing for 4 hotels in the country.
Bratislava challenge
Martijn Mulder has been a loyal member of Starwood team for over 10 years. As he explains, working for Starwood has a lot of advantages for ambitious employees: ´Within Starwood we have a lot of training programs. Once you are in Starwood, I don´t think you will leave soon again, because you have so many opportunities, so many programs, e.g. Grow Global program. It is a very strong program for those who want to go abroad and make the next step in their career. In this program Starwood monitors you and make sure that when you go abroad you are ready for it. I always wanted to do an opening of the hotel, I was told that the opening is going to be something completely different, new experience´
After considering different choices, Martijn finally chose Bratislava for its next step. ´I was offered positions in established Starwood Hotels in other European capital cities, but you have to have a feeling about the hotel and people you will be working with. When I heard about a new hotel opening in Bratislava, I checked the flights to the city, but there were only few of them. As I did not visit Bratislava before I wasn’t aware about the close distance to the Airport of Vienna. Only when my colleague once mentioned this to me I booked a flight to Schwechat, rent a car and headed to Bratislava.
I saw the EUROVEA construction and I realized it was a fantastic product. I took a walk in the city, I liked that it is a small, cozy city, the market was emerging, there were not too many competitors (if you compare it to Prague) and people were very excited about new Sheraton international hotel. I realized the potential and 1 month later I already started working here.
I used to work for 4 hotels at the same time, so I was wondering what I am going to do with all my time while working for just a single property. But soon I realized that with the opening there is so much to do, you have to set up marketing, prepare business plans, choose names for bars and restaurants…building up everything from scratch is a big challenge. You also have to adjust to local mentality and understand what the customers want.
Martijn Mulder has very positive, innovative and inspiring approach to his work. What drives his motivation is mostly people and getting things done: ´Here we started from nothing, but we had a strong brand and in the first year we managed to get extremely good occupancy within local market. One of the reasons of these successes is our motivated team. I could not work with people who would not care about hospitality and providing a high level of service.
In Starwood we have training programs for people to understand how important it is to be positive to not only guests but also colleagues. Many people did not have a lot of experience when we hired them, many came from small hotels with capacity of 20 – 50 rooms. Today they are organizing conferences for 500 guests. People are growing, they have made great steps in their own career. If people want to learn, take challenges and make a connection with the guests, the business will come.´
Potential in partnership building
Martijn enjoys working in Slovakia: ´There are a lot of very enthusiastic people and so many opportunities.´ Martijn takes advantages of these chances to build new promising partnerships, for example in sports segment: ´We were the official partner of Bratislava Marathon. We had the runners staying in our hotel, we had provided VIP areas for journalists, sponsors and top clients. We were the official partner of Fed Cup twice already. These people are very passionate, they enjoyed the quality of our services and fantastic atmosphere. Tennis teams members told us that they haven´t stayed in such a good hotel in the past during the whole tournament.´
In Sheraton Hotel Bratislava sports helps to build not only business partnerships but also helps to motivate team spirit. As Martijn says: ´If people are sporting and they feel good in their private life, they work much better in their job. That is why last year we organized a weekly volleyball tournament at T-com beach where everybody from our hotel staff could join - managers, housekeeping, bell-men and we had 20 people playing together every week. It was fantastic.´
Sheraton Bratislava Hotel has a strong communication towards local clients as well. Hotel restaurant Brasserie Anjou has introduced pre-theater dinner which has become very popular not only among city residents, but also among visitors from Austria, with 200 – 300 visitors on a monthly basis. Sunday jazz brunch has also won the hearts of loyal customers with not only delicious culinary specialties and music entertainment, but also excellent animations for children.
Bratislava as a destination
Martijn Mulder sees a lot of potential in the local market: ´Bratislava is continuously emerging, there are big international companies which create their products in the city or in the surroundings. With new hotel openings we can see that international hotel brands are creating more business for the city. We are promoting Bratislava internationally within Starwood as we always say that Vienna Airport is actually Bratislava Airport, only 35 minutes from Bratislava city center.
We travel to big trade fairs, where people say they don´t know a lot about Bratislava, but they are interested. When we show them how close Bratislava is to the international airport, how competitive the prices are here comparing to other destinations like Madrid, Barcelona etc. and the existence of our Sheraton Hotel, we are creating new demand.
For example, I went to Barcelona fair where I spoke to a client and he said they always need 3 hotels at similar level and close to each other. That we have in Bratislava now. The only problem was that we don’t have a big convention center. But we work closely with Slovak National Theater, so we invited a client to take a look to Bratislava and we offered that they can organize the meetings in the theater. We managed to bring 550 guests and 1500 room nights to 3 hotels.´
To build Bratislava as an attractive destination for not only business clients but also leisure visitors, strong cooperation between hotels and other key parties is crucial. International hotels are working together now, general managers of Sheraton, Kempinski, Crown Plaza and Austria Trend etc. are meeting regularly to prepare a plan for destination marketing of the city, based on establishing a local DMO (destination management organization) as an individual company to promote Bratislava for leisure tourism segment. As Martijn mentioned: ´It´s a pity to go to a big travel fair and see a small booth of Bratislava comparing to three times bigger booth of Ljubljana.
When we will bring our knowledge together I am sure that we can put Bratislava on the international map so we will increase the number of visitors to our city Bratislava.´
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