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