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INDONESIAN Hotel and Restaurant Association (PHRI) has prepared a number of strategies to improve hotel occupancy and tourist visits after being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Secretary General of PHRI Maulana Yusran, said the first step we took was to encourage PHRI members to implement health protocols and seek as much as possible to obtain Cleanliness, Health, Safety and Environmental Sustainability (CHSE) certification. During 2020 the average hotel occupancy rate in Indonesia only reached 34.30% or decreased compared to 2019 which reached 53.80%.
“Apart from implementing health protocols, his party is also trying to get all hotel and restaurant workers to be vaccinated immediately because they work in the public sector. Nationally, the number of hotel and restaurant workers recorded by the Ministry of Health reached 121,485 people and in West Sumatra as many as 2,300 people,” said Maulana Yusran.
He added, then PHRI also held a campaign to travel safely and made adaptations to the sale of accommodation packages during the COVID-19 pandemic. The packages offered range from staycations, work from hotels, self-isolation packages, to meetings and marriages with an antigen swab test.
“I see the challenges faced by hotel and restaurant businesses during the pandemic are that there are still restrictions on the activities and movements of tourists through Large-Scale Social Restrictions and the Enforcement of Restrictions on Community Activities,” he noted.
He explained, this makes it difficult to estimate the occupancy rate this year. As a strategy to respond to this, the hotel tries to make the most of the workforce possible. Next the challenge encountered is the occurrence of online meetings so that it becomes a challenge for hotels with ballrooms.
“Responding to a number of challenges, hotel and restaurant businesses must immediately carry out business transformation by optimizing the use of digital technology and making efficiency,” he concluded. [antaranews/photo special]
