Long known as a major player in the travel and tour business, Panorama has shown its confidence in the hospitality business by planning to open no less than 11 hotels within the next two years.

Through its subsidiary Panorama Hospitality Management (PHM), the country’s largest travel and tour company is set to open the hotels — ranging from budget to four-star — by mid 2014 to meet the growing demand in the leisure and business travel market.

The company will launch its first hotel in April and another in June this year. Both will be in Jakarta.

Panorama will run the hotels under different brands. Two budget hotels under The BnB brand, seven three-star hotels under The 101 brand and two four-star hotels under The Haven brand.

PHM director of marketing and communications Hera Nitihardja said the hotels would be located in business centers and tourism spots in Java, Bali and Sumatra.

“Almost 50 percent of the hotels that we operate will be in Bali because undoubtedly it remains the most attractive tourist spot in Indonesia. We will continue to expand to other places in the future,” Hera said in Jakarta on Tuesday.

“We are really optimistic and confident starting 2013 as we have many projects under construction in major cities in Indonesia. This is aligned with our goal of being the preferred hospitality management operators for hotels and resorts in the country,” she continued.

Over the next year and a half, the firm will open hotels in Jakarta, Bogor, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Bali and Palembang. On average, each hotel will have between 120 to 160 rooms.

“The first hotel that we are going to open this year is the The BnB in Kelapa Gading [in North Jakarta]. We plan to commence operations on the first day of April,” Hera said.

The BnB Jakarta Kelapa Gading hotel, offering what is described as “the urban budget” concept, is located in the heart of North Jakarta, near one of the country’s biggest shopping centers, Mall of Indonesia.

The hotel will comprise 171 rooms, small- to medium-sized meeting rooms to cater to the meeting, incentives, convention and exhibition (MICE) market and a coffee shop. In order to stay ahead in the country’s fiercely competitive hospitality sector, the hotel will also provide free Internet access, lunch and dinner to its guests.

Budget hotels usually only offer a standard bed, without lunch or dinner, to their customers, although several do provide free Internet access.

“After The BnB Jakarta Kelapa Gading, we plan to introduce our three-star brand The 101 Jakarta Dharmawangsa in South Jakarta in the middle of this year,” she said, adding that the hotel would have 138 rooms.

She said that the firm expected to operate two more hotels in Jakarta over the next two years.

PHM will open two more The 101 brand hotels in Bogor and Yogyakarta at the end of this year, each will comprise 156 and 154 rooms, respectively. “We will also open this brand in Palembang [South Sumatra] in mid 2014 to support the growing tourism and business activities in one of the most rapidly developing cities in Sumatra,” she said.

For The Haven brand, the firm will operate The Haven Bali Seminyak and The Haven Bali Brawa.

In addition, the firm is set to launch the Free Eco Hotel brand in 2014 to tap into the nation’s segmented tourist market.

The first project will be in Canggu Beach, Bali to cater to beach tourists and watersports enthusiasts.

The Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association (PHRI) has reported a more than three-fold jump in the number of new hotel rooms available in the market this year.

PHRI chairwoman Wuryanti Sukamdani said that around 50,000 new rooms were expected to be available across the archipelago in 2013, up from the usual 15,000 rooms added annually.

Source: www.thejakartapost.com

Lee