Sunlake Group of Hotels: strategy for Indonesia

Maya Lilaani, COO of Sunlake Group of Hotels talks about the group and strategy.

We were just talking about your hotels. You had three, now you have four?

When we were in Semarang, we began our first platform. That was in Semarang, in central Java. It was 32 years ago. That was quite an achievement for that area at that time, having a star-rated hotel. That’s how we move to Jakarta; the investors moved to Jakarta and started building the first hotel, again in a very remote area. It was covered over with jungle. Of course it took time, but it grew into a convention center in northern Jakarta.

What are your plans for expansion? You’ve moved from Jakarta. Are you thinking about going into Bali?

Our plans are entirely dependent on the tourism infrastructure. There is a lot of homework still to be done. As I see it, this government is working on this to the best of its ability to ensure that tourists- whether business tourists or leisure tourists- understand Jakarta as the capital city, in the sense that there is more than Bali. Bali has long been known, but Indonesia is a big country, and many provinces are still underexposed. It’s quite the task, and this government has been acting very swiftly to introduce or promote these other provinces.

Coming into the area, we got a somewhat negative impression, that it’s not doing so well, but in your hotel, I got the exact opposite impression. What is your distinguishing factor?

As a practical matter, the other hotels in the area have to do quite a lot to keep traffic moving. One thing I would say about our group—we have four hotels and we are looking to expand, to continue building up—that our hidden treasure is the recognizable Indonesian hospitality. This is something that people should experience. You have to have an open heart to feel it, but traditional Indonesian hospitality is incredible, and we are trying to hold on to that in the group: in the Manhattan Hotel, in the other hotels are holding fiercely to this.

I’ve been putting everything together to compete with the other international hotels. We have to keep raising our standard. We hold ourselves under a microscope while at the same time examining the rest of the industry with a telescope: figuring out the trends and responding.

Can we have a sneak peek into these trends and opportunities that you see?

The trends keep changing and opportunities come from the trends themselves. Everyone is very into high tech. Hotels are no exception. High tech hotels, though, may be limited in their human touch, but we will not want to do this because in Indonesia, we recognize our cultural hospitality and we would not want that to be replaced, but rather let everyone experience this touch. Technology: yes of course, you have to move along with that. You can’t ignore technology. The question is just how deep you want to go. All of our information comes from technology, but comfort comes from human conversation. Having a conversation with a human being is better than interacting with a screen or through a speakerphone, autoreply and all of that. I am not saying that the world should move back from these things, but you have to balance.