Westin plans to open more hotels here

Westin plans to open more hotels here

JAKARTA (JP): Westin Hotels and Resorts, a U.S. hotel
management firm based in Seattle, plans a major expansion in
Indonesia, its Surabaya hotel's general manager said yesterday.

Rolf Salomon, said the firm was building a second hotel in
Jakarta. He said it was negotiating with its prospective
partners to run two more hotels in two Indonesian cities.

"We will announce the locations and our partners in the two
hotels before the end of this year," he told The Jakarta Post
here Thursday.

Westin, founded in 1930, runs 104 hotels and resorts in 23
nations, with additional projects under construction in Kuala
Lumpur, Melbourne and Manila.

Salomon refused to give further information about the planned
hotels in Indonesia.

Hotel industry sources believe that Bandung in West Java,
Yogyakarta and Bali would be attractive to Westin and other
international hotel chains catering to business clientele.

Westin runs the 418-room Westin Surabaya which opened in June
1996. The five-star hotel owned by PT Ramasari Surya Persada
joins Surabaya's other luxury hotels, the Hyatt, Shangri-la,
Sheraton and Mandarin.

Westin expects its second hotel, a 39-story property in
Jakarta, to open in 1999. Westin Jakarta, is on Jl. Thamrin,
Central Jakarta, the former Hotel Kartika Plaza site.

The 500-room Westin Jakarta is owned by PT Wisma Kartika, a
joint venture between the Federation Cooperative of the Armed
Forces and PT Luminary Prima.

Director of sales and marketing for Westin Surabaya, Jim
Boyles, said Indonesia was still attractive to hotel operators
because of the country's tremendous economic growth.

"Indonesia is one of the fastest growing nations in Asia. The
country has great potential compared to its neighbors," he said,
adding that Indonesia still needed additional hotels.

Boyles and Salomon were here to promote Westin Surabaya's
incentive program, called Westin's Executive Secretaries Team
(WEST). The program offers benefits to guests and those who
encouraged them to stay at the hotel.

Boyles said WEST was to attract more guests given the stiff
star-rated hotel competition in Surabaya.

There are five five-star hotels in Surabaya, the country's
second biggest city. It is better known as a business center
than a tourist destination.

Surabaya also has at least five four-star hotels. Most of
star-rated hotels in Surabaya are run by overseas hotel chain
firms. The excessive number of star-rated hotels in Surabaya had
sparked a rates war between the five five-star hotels.

But Boyles said the war was over. He said it began because
there was small demand for rooms and a lot of hotel development.

"The occupancy rate of five star-hotels in Surabaya is
estimated to be 45 percent on average for the whole of 1997,
about similar with last year's figure," he said. He said room
rates ranged between US$78 and $80 a night on average.

Surabaya's five-star hotel owners had agreed to end the war
and planned to develop, hand-in-hand, a convention center to
promote Surabaya as a convention city, he said. (icn)