Kompas Gramedia group to open two more hotels
Kompas Gramedia group to open two more hotels
JAKARTA (JP): The country's print media giant Kompas Gramedia
group will open a hotel here in September, making Santika, the
group's property division, a chain of nine hotels with 1200 rooms
by the end of 1997.
A Santika executive, Kurnia Munaba, said here yesterday that a
Santika hotel would also open in Surabaya later this year.
"Santika also plans to manage other hotels in Lombok (West
Nusa Tenggara) and Medan (North Sumatra) in the next few years,"
Munaba said after attending a topping off ceremony for the
Santika Jakarta.
The 12-story Santika Jakarta, on Jl. KS. Tubun in Central
Jakarta, will have 285 rooms including 22 suites and one
presidential suite.
The hotel, on 11,000 square meters, is to open in late
September. It expects to benefit from the SEA Games to be held
here from Oct. 11 to Oct. 19, Munaba said.
He said the hotel was being developed with an investment of
US$36 million. "Half is loans from foreign lending institutions."
The lenders are the International Finance Corporation, an
affiliate of the World Bank; the Asian Finance and Investment
Corporation; the Nederlands Financiering-Maatschappij Voor N.V.
of the Netherlands; and the Deutsche Investitions und
Entwicklungsgesellschaft GmbH of Germany, he said.
Santika Jakarta will compete against other hotels already
operating in nearby Grogol. These include the Ibis Slipi and the
Mercure Tropika which are both run by the French Accor company
and the Ciputra hotel. The Ciputra hotel is in turn managed by
Hong Kong's Swiss-bel Hotel. The Santika will also compete
against dozens of medium and smaller hotels in the Petamburan
area.
Santika Jakarta's Sales and Marketing director Ralph
Scheunemann said he expected most of the hotel's guests would be
corporate clients.
"We expect the guests will be 70 percent from business, up to
20 percent from groups -- particularly from Europe -- and the
remainder from special packages including seminars," he said.
Santika manages seven other star-rated hotels in Yogyakarta
(148 rooms), Bandung, West Java (70 rooms), Semarang, Central
Java (two hotels, 208 rooms in total), Bali (161 rooms), Cirebon,
West Java (87 rooms) and Manado, North Sulawesi (101 rooms).
Santika is one of the few domestic hotel chains in Indonesia.
Most hotels here are run by overseas hotel operators.
Jakob Oetama, Chairman of the Kompas Gramedia Group, said that
the hotel industry in Indonesia was a very labor intensive
operation.
"In addition, it's the nature of Indonesians to serve other
people. But hospitality must be supported with vision,
perspective and knowledge," he said.
He said Indonesians were just as well qualified to manage
star-rated hotels as foreigners, but Santika Jakarta still had to
hire some expatriates due to the city's specific and competitive
market. (icn)