RI hotel industry offers more chances to foreigners
RI hotel industry offers more chances to foreigners
JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia's rapidly growing hotel industry
offers greater opportunities to overseas hotel-utensil
manufacturers rather than domestic firms, which generally fail to
anticipate growing opportunities, a senior tourism official said.
"Domestic manufacturers of hotel-related products should be
more creative in following the rapidly growing hotel industry,"
the chief of the Jakarta office of tourism, post and
telecommunications, Pudjo Basuki, told The Jakarta Post after
officially opening an exhibition of food and hotels at the
Jakarta Fairgrounds yesterday.
He said that most of the participants at the exhibition,
including producers of food, hotel appliances and other goods,
are from foreign countries.
"I don't see any domestic meat supplier at the exhibition. I
think foreign businessmen are more sharp in observing the market
in Indonesia," he said.
In his speech Pudjo said that such an exhibition tightly
relates with the progress of Indonesia's tourism and leisure
businesses.
There are 403 participants from 23 countries in the four-day
exhibition, which is organized by PT Pamerindo Buana Abadi.
An executive of the company, Helly Koesno, said that her
company has actually invited lots of domestic firms to
participate in the event.
"Domestic firms account for only about 30 percent of the
participants of the event," she said, adding that domestic hotel-
related producers are reluctant to take part in such an
exhibition.
Domestic products
A participant at the exhibition, Louis Tjipta, said that
domestic companies of hotel equipment are mainly just
distributors of foreign products.
He said most Indonesian businessmen are usually slower than
foreigners in seeing business opportunities.
Tjipta, who is a manager of PT Indekor Indah Perkasa, said
that his company is a distributor of a Norwegian mechanical and
electronic key system.
He said that his company has already installed key systems in
8,070 rooms of 35 hotels in Indonesia.
An Austrian participant, Wolfgang F. Pfuner, said that he
supplies German-made hotel equipment, including cutlery, kitchen
utensils and glasses for many luxury hotels in the country,
through his Indonesian partner PT Sarijaya Indosakti.
An executive of PT Relindo Winapratama, Indra Kamaludin, told
the Post that domestic hotel-utensil firms do not have good
chances because hotel designs are often determined by the
international hotel management firms operating hotels in
Indonesia.
He said that his company, a supplier of room amenities and
chinaware products, is usually requested, by star-rated hotels,
to use imported products.
Exhibitors of kitchen, bakery and laundry equipment said that
there are no Indonesian products available for the fast growing
hotel industry.
The government projects that the country needs 80,000 more
hotel rooms, within the ongoing sixth Five Year Development Plan
period, to face the fast growth of the tourism industry.
Approximately 6,000 rooms will be constructed in Jakarta this
year, meaning that downstream hotel-related industries will reap
the benefits. (icn)