History of Prawirotaman kampong
The signboards of hotels, travel agents and restaurants still advertise their wares on this tourist street, but the effect is more ghost town than anything else. The Prawirotaman area in Yogyakarta has suffered heavily from the collapse of the Indonesian tourist industry, with fewer and fewer tourists seen wandering through the kampong, and hotel occupancy rates that have been dwindling constantly for a few years now.
“The tourism industry was hit hard by the first Bali bombing in 2002. The industry bounced back several months afterward, but the second bombing last year made the industry really collapse as nobody was willing to visit Indonesia,” said Wisnu Santoso, manager of Airlangga Guest House.
“If the situation gets worse, then we’ll consider selling our hotel to investors,” he added, and mentioned that a hotel in Prawirotaman, the Sriwijaya Guest House, had recently closed down. Another hotel, he said, the Galunggung Guest House, had been sold by its owner, while several others had been put on sale.
“Just in order to survive, we need an occupancy rate of at least 30 percent. But last month our occupancy rate was only 10 percent,” explained Wisnu, whose 40-room hotel is the only star-rated hotel in Prawirotaman kampong.
The kampong, located some two kilometers southeast of Keraton Yogyakarta, is a small area with around 2,000 residents. There are two main streets in Prawirotaman, Jl. Prawirotaman I and Jl. Prawirotaman II (Jl. Gerilya), and about 30 hotels and a range of companies providing tourist services operate in the area.
In the 1960s, it was home to many of the most important batik factories in Yogyakarta, producing juragan batik. As the tourism industry grew, however, the owners of the factories decided to change industries, converting their houses and factories into hotels.
“That is why hotels here look more like old-style houses than hotels in other places,” explained a kampong elder, Pak Ali.
Kampong Prawirotaman remains a unique and interesting location for tourists to stay. It is easy to interact with local people, as the hotels are surrounded by residences, and, in their heritage buildings, the hotels give tourists the opportunity to experience life as it was in the past in Yogyakarta. Architecturally, there is generally little difference between the private residences on the streets and the hotels.
Of course, improvements have been made to the buildings. Over half the hotels in Prawirotaman have swimming pools. Air-conditioned rooms are available cheap, with prices ranging from Rp 75,000 to 175,000 per night.
Local travel agencies offer a variety of packages to tourists. Via-Via Cafe, for instance, offers outdoor adventures such as trekking, cycling and motorcycling to the ancient temples around Yogyakarta and Central Java, with participants traveling through villages and rice fields.
Owned jointly by an Indonesian and a Belgian, Via-Via is better equipped to survive hard-times than many wholly local companies. Like a few other companies in the area also owned by foreign investors, such as Prambanan Guest House, they are more financially stable, with wider, international networks to call on for support.
For local hotel businessmen with few international contacts, however, it is a little more difficult to weather the storm.
“I think we’ll try to focus on domestic tourists. We will also put marketing people in the airport, and at the railway and bus stations to offer rooms to travelers there,” said Wisnu.
By: Asip A. Hasani, The Jakarta Post