Sahid Makassar opens

UJUNGPANDANG, South Sulawesi (JP): The four-star, 250-room Hotel Sahid Makassar was opened here Saturday by South Sulawesi Governor Z.B. Palaguna.

The Sahid group owns 60 percent of the hotel, and the Kalla group 40 percent.

The 12-story hotel, on a 15,000 square-meter site in central Ujungpandang, cost Rp 60 billion (US$25 million) to build.

The government has chosen Ujungpandang as one of the country's three major air transport hubs, along with Jakarta and Medan, North Sumatra. The province needs more star-rated hotels to accommodate an increasing number of foreign tourists.

Ujungpandang has few star-rated hotels. Among them are the Makassar Golden, Marannu, Radisson and Sedona.

Several local and overseas hotel chains plan to open hotels here. The Lippo Group, one of the leading diversified conglomerates in Indonesia, is developing a tourist estate in Tanjung Bunga, Ujungpandang, through PT Gowa Makassar Tourism Development Corporation.

In 1996, 600,000 overseas tourists and 1.5 million domestic visitors went to South Sulawesi, where they spent Rp 8 billion.

Sahid Makassar's president, Hariadi B. Sukamdani, said the hotel had had a 75 percent occupancy rate since its soft opening last December. (37/icn)