ARTHOTEL: Indonesian hotel entrepreneurship

Erastus Radjimin, CEO of ARTHOTEL talks about the hotel.

How did you come up with this concept of ARTHOTEL and how did you decide what to do?

When I first graduated from Boston University in 2007 I had an opportunity to work with the international hospitality management company. I was based in London for about a year and a half and after that Singapore as well as Jakarta. My background is as a professional in the hospitality business although my degree was more towards business administration, marketing and finance.

When I returned to Indonesia I worked with a corporate company to create their own brand of 5 Star hospitality hotels. My hobby is art and I am passionate about it. While I was creating their brand I relocated to Jakarta and there I saw an opportunity.  There is a lot of contemporary art in Indonesia, very prominent, developed and modern but unfortunately there was not much media showcased within the market.

We felt that we needed to set up a business that wasn’t just there to make money but it had to have a theatre component so that we could give back to the country that we love. That is why we created this brand. It was my childhood dream to have a hotel brand under our supervision but we didn’t want to set up business just for the sake of having a business. We wanted to be able to give back to the community and the country in a way we are comfortable with.

Luckily my background and my family background and my siblings are all in the hospitality industry as well so in 2010 we started to talk about the concept of combing art and hotel into one. There are many art hotels in the world where they hang paintings on the walls and place sculptures everywhere but we didn’t want the artwork to become the decoration, we wanted the artwork to become the soul of the hotel because one of our principles it to promote enriching art to the world and to our customers without anyone being required to buy any of the art.

Our mission was purely to educate the customers who might not understand art or who have never heard about the artwork in Indonesia and to show them that it is very prominent and contemporary.

You have created an interesting, creative and unique concept in the hotel industry and I am asking myself if you are thinking about franchising or going public with the company. Are you looking for franchising or investors? Do you have people in the market coming to you?

We started to sell our management contracts when we had 2 hotels running because I believe that before you can sell a management contract to someone you have to prove that you are able to manage your own hotel. It was our strategy in the beginning to build and manage our own hotel as our purpose was to show potential investors that we are able to run a feasible hotel and after the success of the first 3 hotels we have had leads coming in from the management contract franchises within Indonesia.

We will potentially be joining forces to expand internationally but for now it is not our priority. We want to grow our brand in Indonesia for the next 5 years. We want to be present in the capital and the capital cities before we start thinking about international expansion.