Jakarta will soon get 41 new hotels

JAKARTA (JP): The government has approved applications for the establishment of 41 hotels in Jakarta, Director General of Tourism Andi Mappi Sammeng said here over the weekend.

Of the approved hotels, 16, with 4,429 rooms, are scheduled to operate in the near future, he said at a ceremony for the opening of the Ibis Slipi Hotel in West Jakarta.

The three-star rated Ibis Slipi Hotel, the third Ibis hotel in Indonesia managed by Accor Asia Pacific Corporation of France, has 17 floors and 350 rooms.

According to Andi, Jakarta already has 70 star-rated hotels with 12,000 rooms and 135 non-star-rated hotels with 4,956 rooms.

He said competition among four-star and five-star hotels in Jakarta is getting fiercer today, while competition among three- star hotels will likely get tougher within three to four years time.

The occupancy rate of star rated hotels in the country's capital is estimated at an average of 70 percent.

Meanwhile, A. Steinmayer, chief representative of Accor Asia Pacific, said that Indonesia still needs to build thousands of hotel rooms.

Indonesia, with a population of 180 million people, only has 76,000 hotel rooms, far lower than the 250,000 hotel rooms in Thailand, which has population of 50 million people.(05)