Puncak villas to be subject to hotel tax

Theresia Sufa, The Jakarta Post, Bogor

The Bogor Regency administration has taken control of about 1,000 privately rented villas in the Puncak mountain resort area. This time, the reason was not to protect the already damaged environment, but to convert 16 of the villas into hotels, because the villas are increasing the stiff competition faced by major hotels in the area.

"Although renting the villas is much more expensive than staying at hotels in Puncak, they are still the hotels' rivals," head of the tourism facilities division Baehaki at the Bogor Tourism Agency told The Jakarta Post recently.

Currently, there are at least 123 hotels in the resort area, 15 of which are star-rated. In comparison, in the two subdistricts of Cisarua and Megamendung alone, there are 1,715 villas, 840 of which were built illegally on state-owned land.

From the hotels and restaurants in Puncak alone, the administration has made up to Rp 11 billion (US$1.29 million) in tax revenues in 2002, far exceeding their target of Rp 5.6 billion.

As no permit is required to rent villas, their owners are not obliged to pay any levies to the regental administration. By upgrading the villas into hotels, however, all this could change.

The minimum rate for a standard room in mid-range hotels is between Rp 150,000 (US$17) and Rp 200,000 per night, while standard rooms start from Rp 600,000 per night for star-rated hotels.

Renting a villa, which can accommodate up to 10 people, costs from Rp 600,000 to Rp 850,000 per night.

According to Baehaki, data collected by the Bogor Tourism Agency shows that only about 583,000 people stayed in hotels out of the 1.8 million people who visited Puncak in 2002. The remainder preferred to rent villas.

The data also indicates that most hotel guests are participants of conventions frequently held in Puncak. Only 30 percent of guests checked in as individuals.

Combined with the environmental damage caused by the influx of villas in Puncak, these semi-private resort accommodations may become a thing of the past.

Last year, the Jakarta administration proposed to demolish luxury villas in Puncak, which were blamed for Jakarta's floods. However, the proposal was turned down by the central government because it was too costly and difficult to tear down the buildings.

Research by the office of the State Minister of the Environment showed that the development of villas increases land erosion, which in turn leads to high levels of upriver sedimentation in tributaries that flow into the Ciliwung River.

Data from the environmental minister's office also revealed that erosion in these upriver areas reaches 400 tons of earth per hectare, per year, while the maximum safe limit for a river is 39 tons per hectare, per year.

Governor Sutiyoso demolished his own villa in Cisarua and made this publicly known, but the public discovered later that his more luxurious, 25-hectare villa in Ciampea, about seven kilometers from the tourist area of Kawah Ratu in Gunung Bunder, still stands.