Puncak villas to be subject to hotel tax

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.