48 Edition 2022 Web Latest

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48th | 2022 | www.hotelier-indonesia.com
You acquired Karma Salak in Puncak
(Bogor – West Java). Would you mind to
share a background story behind this?
Karma Salak, this was a bit of an accident, to be candid.
I mean what happened with the pandemic is
that we were really forced to overlook the Indonesian
market and say, I don’t think we got enough resorts in
Indonesia. We’ve maybe a bit lazy over the years. We’ve
developed many resorts in Bali, and that area where that
be in the Gili Islands or Bali itself, and our market was a
combination of the western market and the Indonesian
market. And things were very well, our resorts were full
and business was good. But clearly with the pandemic
in meant all of us sudden that the foreign markets, primarily
the Australian market stopped.
And so we were forced to look at ourselves and say well,
what does a lot more we can do in Indonesia and with
the Indonesian market? And so we went out and try to
identify and acquire some more resorts. And this actually
is being quite a common trend all over the world,
because the last two years, tourism was really become
domestic. So our Indonesian resorts are visited by
Indonesians, our English resorts by English or German,
our Australian by Australian, and its been quite a chaotic
exercise, because it forced us to look at expanding
our portfolio so we can increase the attraction to the
domestic audience.
And so we looked around Jakarta and one of the goals
with our new acquisitions is to be quite near a major
metro, near where we already have owners and members
and near where we think we can attract more
members in the future so that it is easy for them to go
and visit our resorts, and easy to experience the Karma
philosophy and lifestyle and jeune se quais, and yet
be somewhere that when the world opens up, which
thankfully it is at the moment, the international consumer
and our international members was also be very
keen to go and visit. So it has to be a combination attractive
to the local domestic market and but also attractive
to the international market. So Karma Salak came up. I
went to see it myself and that area blew me away.
I love nasi goreng, but the mountains and the volcanoes,
and the local scenery, the people were wonderfully
friendly, and we found this property which seem to tick
the boxes which is why we actually went ahead and
acquired it. And it has been a great success. Since then
we are looking at more in Indonesia. We are about to
announce,
literally this week the acquisition of a new property
in Yogyakarta, which again I think is a beautiful area
where clearly its a natural, a lot of people live, and a lot
of Indonesians like to visit it for the culture, the temples
etc. And I also believe just like with Karma Salak that
when the Brits, the Australians and the Americans, and
the Germans can once again visit Indonesia, these are
beautiful locations to go and see, and again with the
same logic as we have done in India, what we are trying
to do is what we call split center destinations and so
that the consumer can come from let’s say London or
from Sydney.
They can spent a few days in Bali, few days in Karma
Salak, few days in Yogya, and we are looking at other
sites all over Indonesia which maybe they wouldn’t
have gone to before, but because we can bracket them
with Bali they will be able to go there and they’ll discover
some amazing places and see that Indonesia has
a host of fantastic destination for them to visit.
What is next? Where do you plan to
acquire more? Maybe in Indonesia and
overseas?
Well absolutely. I mean tomorrow I get on a plane to
go to Scotland where we are going to be acquiring a
new asset that I think is going to be very exciting. After
Scotland we are looking all over Europe, as I said we
recently relaunched down in Spain. We are looking at
various other places in Italy, and down in Greece. In
India we have some new assets that we are looking at.
And further a field; we’ve got some very interesting projects
in the Philippines.
We have a resort, which we hope to launch relatively
soon on the beautiful island of Palawan, we’re looking
at a project down in Fiji. We have a lot to build in east
coast of Australia and Kiwis love to go, which is Denaral
in the Manuka Islands. And most probably most exotic
or far away is we are about to close on the acquisition
of a piece of land in northern Brazil near the town of
Fortaleza. It’s becoming a mecca for windsurfers or kite
surfers and all sorts of adventure sports fanatics, and
we’ve looked at a piece of land there, which has permit
on to build a hotel. And that’ll be our first in Latin
America region and so expect to hear more about that
soon.
But yes going in on to the pandemics, I said we would
come out of it with no fewer resorts then we went in.