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)