Food festival winners announced

Food festival winners announced

JAKARTA (JP): Eat well and get a roundtrip First Class
Jakarta-Hong Kong plane ticket, free accommodation at Shangri-La
Hong Kong and a dining voucher or Rp 500,000 (US$235.84) at
Jakarta's Oasis restaurant. Iwan Susilo, a holder of an American
Express (Amex) card since 1987, won all of those things by simply
filling in a form at the restaurant, which was a participant in
1994's Jakarta Food Festival.

Hermawan Tanzil and Frans A.M. Nijnens, also Amex card
holders, won the second and the third prizes. The festival was
held from September until October last year.

The festival, organized by the City Tourism Office, the
Indonesian Tourism Promotion Board and Amex Travel Related
Services and participated in by 39 restaurants, aimed to improve
service in Jakarta's restaurants in order to make the city more
competitive as a place for doing business.

Patrons of restaurants participating in the festival, which
will is to be an annual event, were asked to fill in a form,
stating their opinion about the restaurants. The form was used in
the three prizes lucky draw. Based on customers' choice, the
Oasis, Forum Shark's Fin and Singapore Ping restaurants were
declared the winners of the festival.

"To increase food quality and services in restaurants is very
important now if we want to develop our tourism industry," said
Roy Tan Hardy, Amex Travel Related Services's director of
marketing and sales. He was speaking at the prize presentation
ceremony yesterday.

"A survey carried by Australian-based consultant Frank Small
and Associates, in Jakarta and Bali last November, recorded that
more than half of foreign visitors rated the food in Jakarta as
'good to excellent', while one out of four visitors mentioned
good food and entertainment as the most memorable about
Indonesia," Roy said. (als)