Jogjakarta Plaza celebrates 10th anniversary

Jogjakarta Plaza celebrates 10th anniversary

Sri Wahyuni, The Jakarta Post/Yogyakarta

Many consider unity as one of the keys to a successful business.

Unless it is present, both internally within an entity and externally within the wider community, it will be difficult for a business to operate successfully, let alone develop optimally.

Sharing the same thinking, the four-star Jogjakarta Plaza hotel on Jl. Gejayan has adopted "Unity on Ten" as the central theme for its 10th anniversary celebration this year on July 10.

Based on this theme, the hotel wants to show that its employees, business partners, the media, guests, and the surrounding community are all considered equally important. Unity, therefore, must be promoted between the hotel and all of these components.

"Without the support of the employees, our business partners, the media, and the surrounding community, we would never have achieved what he have achieved to date," Jogjakarta Plaza's General Manager Yungke Wibowo told The Jakarta Post recently.

As an expression of gratitude and appreciation, therefore, a series of programs have been planned and conducted both to commemorate the hotel's 10th anniversary, and as part of its social and promotional programs.

For employees who have with the hotel for the entire 10 years, for example, the management is putting on a special dinner on July 10 during which representatives of the management and the owners will present them with merit awards.

For its business partners, meanwhile, the management has paid official visits this week to the 10 local companies that play the biggest roles in supporting the hotel's operations to express gratitude and appreciation. As for its customers, the hotel is putting on various attractive promotions.

"We have also been helping local street children as part of our social activities over the last few years and have just started providing scholarships to elementary school students," Yungke explained.

In the field of tourism, the hotel participates in various associations, including the Association of Hotel General Managers, the Association of Indonesian Hotels and Restaurants, and the Java Pavilion, a government-sponsored organization made up of local stakeholders in the tourism industry.

"We have a lot to do to promote the tourism industry here. The most important thing is to encourage more foreign tourists to come to Jogja," said Yungke, referring to Yogyakarta by its popular nickname.

Despite being the second most important tourist destination in Indonesia after Bali, according to Yungke, Yogyakarta is still not so popular among foreign tourists.

This is why the establishment of Yogyakarta-Kuala Lumpur and Yogyakarta-Singapore direct flights last year has failed to produce a significant increase in the number of foreign tourists visiting the province.

"Like it or not, we are still dependent on Jakarta and Bali as our main gateways as regards foreign tourists," Yungke said.

As a result, Yogyakarta hotels fail to fully benefit from visits by foreign tourist visits as most of these prefer to visit Jogja in the morning and then return to Bali or Jakarta in the evening.

Yungke, therefore, stressed the need for more intensive marketing of Jogja as a destination. This could be done by creating various attractive, innovative tour packages and offering more interesting nightlife.

"In this case, unity among all the stakeholders in the tourism industry, including the local governments and the community in general, is essentially. We cannot succeed by not acting in tandem. We must all work together, with all the stakeholders being involved," he said.

Previously under the management of Radisson Hotels and Resorts since its establishment on July 10, 1995, Jogjakarta Plaza joined up on April 1, 2003, with four other hotels around the country under the same management and formed a new local hotel chain named Prime Plaza Hotels and Resorts.

The four other hotels are Kota Bukit Indah Plaza (Purwakarta, West Java), Surabaya Plaza (East Java), Sanur Paradise Plaza (Bali), and Bali Dynasty Resort (Kuta, Bali).

The rebranding, according to Yungke, was carried out mostly for efficiency purposes. By becoming a local hotel chain, the hotels do not need to spend extra money paying franchise fees. This way, he said, they could devote more resources to improving hotel facilities.

In terms of health and fitness facilities, for example, the Jogjakarta Plaza is presently the only star-rated hotel in the province that has a beach volleyball court, cardio-fitness theater, and health club facilities of Olympic standard.

It was also because of these Olympic standard facilities that climber Clara Sumarwati once trained here under the supervision of a health consultant from the nearby Yogyakarta State University (UNY).

Yungke said that being a local hotel chain made it easier for the hotels in the group to realize their pledges to serve as benchmarks for Indonesian hospitality by highlighting the local characteristics of their respective locations, thus making each of the hotels a unique property.

With its new motto of "Same Smile, New Name & Even Better Service", the 129-room Jogjakarta Plaza is one of Yogyakarta's leading hotels with an average occupancy rate of between 70 percent and 80 percent.