Hotel occupancy drops by 10 percent

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The demand for rooms at international hotels in the capital has slumped since the bombing at JW Marriott Hotel, Mega Kuningan business district, South Jakarta, last Tuesday. However, the chairman of a hotel association expects that the situation will improve in the near future.

George Benney, chairman of the Jakarta International Hotel Association, told a media briefing on Monday that occupancy rates at 28 international member hotels of the association had dropped by 10 percent, from a previous 45 percent, after the bombing that claimed 11 lives and injured 148 others.

"There were also 2,500 room cancellations during the three-day period after the blast. But that has now stopped and we estimate that new bookings are coming in," he said.

Benney compared the Marriott bombing's impact to last year's Bali bombings in which 202 people, mostly Western holidaymakers, were killed while over 300 others were injured.

After the Bali bombings, the hotel occupancy rate in Jakarta dropped to around 25 percent. The blast almost caused the collapse of the hotel industry on the resort island.

"The occupancy rate in the short term will be negative but it won't be so bad," Benney said.

Among the 28 members of the association are Hyatt, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Accor, Mandarin Oriental International and also Marriott.

Benney, the general manager of Mandarin Oriental hotel, Central Jakarta, said that his hotel had already recorded bookings for September.

"It seems customers are not overreacting to the bombing. People do understand that this is a global war on terrorism, not just in Jakarta or Indonesia," he said, adding that his association had talked to customers to measure their reactions after the blast.

Benney said the association was "a bit optimistic" that the situation would improve, as hotels in Jakarta targeted mostly business travelers rather than tourists.

"They have to come to Jakarta anyway. Even if the CEOs, for example, declined to come, their managers would still need to come to do business with Indonesian companies," he argued.

International hotels in Jakarta have pledged to put long-term security measures in place to fight terrorist attacks.

All member hotels have started to beef up security by having only one entrance, hiring more security guards and seeking advice from professional security firms.

However, Benney said, most hotels could only provide hand-held metal detectors. They could not provide security gates that can detect plastic explosives, as they cost US$60,000 each.

However, he would not elaborate on additional spending by hotels on improved security measures.

Benney predicted that hotel occupancy would improve in late August at the earliest, "if the authorities manage to put in their best efforts in fighting terrorism and we continue to maintain good communications with the police and the authorities."

The tourism sector, which accounts for about 5 percent of the country's gross domestic product, was just starting to recover from last year's Bali bombings.

Police have rounded up most of the perpetrators, allegedly members of the shadowy Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) terror group. One of the suspects, Amrozi, was sentenced to death last week.