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.