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THOUSANDS of hotels are sold online on marketplaces or buying and selling sites. Based on kontan.co.id’s search on Thursday (2/16), 2023 as many as 3,336 hotels were sold on the buying and selling website www.lamudi.co.id.
The prices offered vary, the highest (data February 16, 2023) is sold for IDR 150 billion for a 3-star hotel located in Gondokusuman, Yogyakarta City. The specification has a land area of 1,600 m² with a building area of 5,000 m². The hotel consists of 4 floors plus a basement floor with 71 bedrooms and 4 meeting rooms. There is also a swimming pool, restaurant, coffee lounge, and parking area.
A similar phenomenon is also found on the property sales page, www.rumah123.com. By typing the keyword “hotel” in the search field, site visitors will immediately be shown a series of advertisements for hotels being sold.
For example, Bali Pop Hotel on Jalan Dewi Sri, Badung-Bali was sold for IDR70 billion and Banana Inn Hotel on Jl. Dr. Setiabudi No. 191, Gegerkalong, Sukasari District, Bandung Regency was priced at IDR67 billion.
According to Country Manager of Rumah123.com, Maria Manik said, the trend of hotel sales advertisements began to increase in 2020, when Indonesia began to be hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The conclusion was obtained based on the total listings recorded at rumah123.com.
“We saw a jump of 9.2 thousand hotel listings in 2020, when compared to the previous year, 2019,” Maria said, Thursday (02/16).
In 2022, the phenomenon of hotel listings for rumah123.com is still rife. Listing data for hotel sales that reached 2.9 thousand placed DKI Jakarta as the province with the most hotel listings on rumah123.com, followed by West Java at 2.4 thousand, Bali at 1.3 thousand, and DI Yogyakarta around 800 and East Java at 780.
Maria suspects that the number of domestic and foreign tourists in Indonesia has also put pressure on the national tourism industry, including hoteliers.
The end of the pandemic situation, according to Maria, does not necessarily restore the hotel business, because the recovery process certainly takes time to return to normal. This has made some businesspeople who face challenges in fulfilling various obligations finally decide to sell their hotel properties.
Simirlarly, Chairman of the Indonesian Real Estate Brokers Association (AREBI), Lukas Bong said that the phenomenon of rampant sales of hotels has occurred since the beginning of the pandemic.
“A lot of hotel management is rather minus because there are no local or foreign guests. Especially because of the lockdown and travel ban. On the one hand, maybe the people who used to own this hotel might need funds, because the hotel expenses are tight,” said Lukas.
Likewise, Senior Director, Research and Consultancy, Savills Indonesia, Tommy Bastamy said, the rampant phenomenon of hotel sales occurred because the hotel industry had not yet recovered, especially in areas that relied on hotel occupancy from international tourists.
On the pain side, the large supply of hotels in an area also makes room rates and occupancy rates difficult to move up due to intense competition.
“The heavy burden of hotel operations in conditions like the two things above make landlords intend to sell their hotel assets. Moreover, since the pandemic period many of these hotels have experienced difficulties in financing their operational costs,” explained Tommy.
Even so, he continued, the phenomenon of hotel sales is not without enthusiasts. Lukas said, areas such as Bali and Yogyakarta are the target of investors. Hotel transactions in Bali are quite high. Some of them were sold at good prices by various local and foreign investors.
Tommy added that hotels with good potential and performance are quite desirable in the market. This market interest does not all result in transactions in the form of sales transactions, but there are also some that are in the form of cooperation.
“But on the contrary, for hotels with fairly low performance and potential, it will certainly be quite difficult to sell,” concluded Tommy. [kontan.co.id/photo special]
