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WORK From Bali (WFB) program was not very effective in helping hotel occupancy on the Island of the Gods to improve economic recovery amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Secretary General of the Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association (PHRI) Maulana Yusran in Jakarta, Wednesday (6/9), said assessed that the Work From Bali program was not very effective in helping hotel occupancy on the Island of the Gods to improve economic recovery amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Revealing the reason is that the potential for increasing hotel occupancy from the Work From Bali program for state civil apparatus is not strong enough to help fill hotel rooms in order to sustain income. in times of pandemic,” he said.
He explained that usually, before the pandemic, hotel room occupancy in Bali was dominated by foreign tourists up to 70%, while local tourists were 30%. If the average hotel occupancy is 60%, it means that the hotel occupancy contribution from local tourists as expected from the Work From Bali program only reaches 20%.
“This 20% occupancy is not a number that can help strength, it is not very effective in helping strength rather than endurance. The hotel, when it comes to occupancy, is at least around 45% and above, if 20% is still too far,” Maulana noted.
In addition, currently the government will also organize similar programs from other tourist destinations, such as Work From Yogyakarta and Work From Lombok, which are considered to make the program not focus on one destination. Automatically, people who work from these tourist destinations will be fewer and more ineffective because the potential income is getting smaller.
Maulana emphasized that PHRI did not criticize the government program, but only stated that the activity was considered not very effective if it was calculated systematically based on available data.
“It’s not bad, it’s certainly a good program. But if we are asked whether it is effective or not, it is not effective when compared to the data. Instead of organizing a program working from tourist destinations, Maulana suggested it would be better if the government loosened the policy of restricting people’s movement,” Maulana underlined.
He considered that the death of the tourism industry in Indonesia, including the impact on hotels, was related to the policy of restricting people’s movements. [antaranews/photo special]
