Choice Hotels to open three new hotels soon
JAKARTA (JP): Choice Hotels, an international hotel chain, will open three new hotels in the country this year in an aggressive expansion plan.
Karl Waelti, the Chief Operating Officer in Indonesia of the Washington D.C. company, said yesterday that two of the hotels were in Jakarta and one in Solo, Central Jakarta.
"One of the hotels, called Juanda, Central Jakarta, will have its soft opening in July," he said at a hotel management seminar conducted by Choice Hotels Indonesia.
The Juanda hotel would have 100 suites -- each with three bedrooms and a kitchen -- a health center, and a swimming pool, he said.
"It is a quality hotel or a first class hotel," he said.
The hotel chain operates seven hotels in Indonesia. They are in Parapat (North Sumatra), Batam island (Riau), Bali, Yogyakarta (Central Java), Carita (West Java), Surabaya (East Java) and at Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.
Choice Hotels operates seven kinds of hotels ranging from one- star budget hotels to four-star luxury hotels worldwide. They include Clarion (deluxe), Quality (first class), Comfort (mid price deluxe), and Sleep (budget) hotels.
It also operates mid-priced Rodeway and EconoLodge hotels and MainStay Suites, in the United States and Canada only.
Waelti said the company would open a quality hotel in Solo in November. The hotel would have 140 executive suites and standard rooms, a coffee shop, health center and banquet room for 800 people, he said.
In December, the company expected to open a Clarion hotel on Jl. Dr. Saharjo, South Jakarta, he said. The four-star hotel would have 171 rooms and suites, meeting rooms, restaurants, and a fitness center, he said.
Choice Hotels, which is publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is a franchise company which operates about 3,908 hotels in 40 countries. Some are still being built.
Waelti said the company expected to open two new hotels in the next two years.
One, in Cikini, Jakarta, will have 178 rooms and will open in July next year. The other would open in 1990 in Palembang, South Sumatra, he said.
"By the end of this year we expect to sign contracts to operate eight more hotels," he said.
The mainly quality hotels, would be in Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Batam, Bandung, Balikpapan, Semarang, Surabaya and Bali, he said.
Waelti said contracts were usually worth about US$100,000, including technical assistance for the developers during the hotels' construction.
Once the hotel begins operating, hotel owners pay Choice Hotels a management fee of 3 percent of the revenue. This includes the royalty fee, he said. The company also gets profit incentives, he said.
Choice Hotels Indonesia's executive chairman David Schaefer said yesterday his company was in the financing stage of building a Sleep Inn, a budget tourist hotel, on Batam island.
Sleep Inn's are Choice's modular factory built hotels. They are limited in service and designed for short term staying travelers.
"Once it is negotiated, it will only take six months to build the hotel," Schaefer said yesterday.
It will be built by Thai Gypsum, a Thai modular construction maker. The steel-framed building would be shipped to the location after its completion, he said.
Batam Sleep Inn would have 120 rooms, each of which would cost about US$40,000, excluding the price of the land and shipping costs, he said.
Schaefer said Choice Hotels expected to open between 30 and 40 Sleep Inns within ten years in secondary cities all over the country. (das)