Bandung lacks 3,000 hotel rooms on weekend

Bandung lacks 3,000 hotel rooms on weekend

Yuli Tri Suwarni
The Jakarta Post/Bandung

Surya was confused. He had been hours looking for a hotel room
nearby Bandung's Station Hall area, where the main railway
station in the city is located, but his efforts had been
unfruitful. All of the hotels he could find were already fully
booked or occupied. It was a cool 9 p.m. on Saturday evening, and
he began considering the prospect of sleeping in a mosque.

"Where else I can go?" thought Surya, a Jakartan, who had just
attended a wedding party in Bandung. He blamed himself for not
being prepared for his trip to Bandung. He had thought it would
be easy to find hotel room in the city, which is one of the four
largest in the country.

Feeling frustrated and annoyed, Surya dragged himself to yet
another guest house.

He finally found refuge at the Hotel Jelita Parahiyangan, a
few kilometers away from the train station, after a passing man
told him there were two empty rooms.

The problem Surya faces is a common one in Bandung. The city
currently faces a shortage of at least 3,000 hotel rooms to
accommodate the increasing number of travelers every weekend,
according to the West Java Indonesian Hotels and Restaurants
Association (PHRI).

PHRI chairman H. Dermawan said there were only about 3,000
rooms available in the city, ranging from five-star hotels to
modest inns, while on the weekends there could be more than 7,000
rooms sought by prospective guests.

"Frankly speaking, we are at a loss at how to respond to the
increasing demand for hotel rooms at weekends -- what can we do?"

"We can't just build more hotels," Dermawan said recently on
the sidelines of the West Java Travel Exchange (JTX) 2004
exhibition at Bandung City Hall.

Dermawan said investment in the hotel sector was essential.
But building more hotels was uneconomic, he said, because hotels
were not fully occupied for the whole week. If hotels expanded in
size to address the demand for the weekend, the investment would
not generate more revenue, as the buildings would be left idle on
weekdays, he said.

However, Dermawan said hotel occupancy rates in Bandung were
still the highest in the province.

On weekdays they were between 50 and 60 percent full. In other
tourist destinations like Pangandaran beach in Ciamis, the
occupancy rate was only about 17 percent, he said. The city of
Sukabumi has a rate of 30 to 40 percent, while the Puncak resort
area, which encompasses Bogor and Cianjur, it is about 50
percent.

Data on tourist numbers show Bandung, considered by many a
shopping paradise, is still the No. 1 tourist destination in West
Java province.

Almost half of both the domestic and foreign tourists visiting
West Java province stop in the city.

Tourism a lucrative industry in West Java. About 35 million
local and 400,000 foreign tourists have visited the province
since January, bringing in Rp 17 trillion (US$1.8 billion) gross
revenue into the province for the first half of this year.