Hotel occupancy rate drops 20 percent

Hotel occupancy rate drops 20 percent

SURAKARTA, Central Java: The Surakarta chapter of the
Indonesian Hotels and Restaurants' Association (PHRI) said on
Thursday that the hotel occupancy rate in the sultanate city had
dropped by 20 percent in the period following the Bali bombing.

The association's chairman, Subandono, said that the decline
was mainly caused by travel cancellations by foreign tourists.

He added that the slump had forced some major hotels to lower
their room rates by between 10 and 20 percent.

"This is the hardest time for the hotel business. We will go
bankrupt if the security situation does not improve," Subandono
said.

Some 15 percent of the 100 hotels in Surakarta are star-rated.
Their occupancy rates had recently rebounded to some 45 percent,
the highest level since the 1998 riots, but the Bali bombing has
caused them to slump again.

"We try to promote tourism here through distributing brochures
with the help of Garuda Indonesia Airways. Our target is tourists
from Europe and Asia," Subandono said, adding that a group of
European tourists had been in the city since last week. --Antara