Deutsche Presse-Agentur
March 16, 2004, Tuesday

Surabaya’s Mandarin Oriental Majapahit Hotel the best thing in town

By Peter Janssen, dpa

Surabaya, Indonesia

Surabaya – Indonesia’s second largest metropolis – is a classic
example of modern Asian urban ugliness. With its estimated 3.5
million people, Surabaya offers visitors horrendous traffic, plenty
of concrete office buildings, a plethora of shopping malls and a
collection of international hotel chains that can be found in just
about any other bustling Asian city. Unique to Surabaya, however, is
the Mandarin Oriental Majapahit Hotel, arguably the classiest
“historic” hotel remaining in Indonesia. The Majapahit was built in
1910 by Lucas Martin Sarkies, son of Martin Sarkies, eldest of the
famed Sarkies brothers who launched some of Southeast Asia’s finest
hotels. The Sarkies, including brothers Martin, Tigran, Aviet and
Arshak, were Armenian merchants who in the 1880s starting building
classy hotels in the main entrepots of England’s former colonies in
Southeast Asia. Their first establishment was the Eastern & Oriental
Hotel in Penang, built in 1884, followed by Raffles in Singapore,
1887, and finally by the Strand in Rangoon, now Yangon, in 1901.
Those three Sarkies’ “gems” still stand today, embodying the good old
days of colonial splendour in their respective cities. All three have
undergone extensive renovations, under new owners, (the Sarkies went
bust in the late 1930s), to position themselves as five-star
establishments catering to tourists and businessmen with a taste for
the past at today’s prices. Less well known within the Sarkies’
historic hotel chain is Surabaya’s elegant Majapahit Hotel, a
veritable oasis of quietude and greenery in what has always been a
busy, noisy port city. Lucas Martin Sarkies originally called the
establishment the “Oranje Hotel”, sensibly catering to its chiefly
Dutch clientele. In 1936, an Art Deco style lobby was added to the
hotel in an apparent effort to modernize the property, which accounts
for its rather drab frontage today. Luckily the rest of the hotel was
spared. The Majapahit was extensively renovated in 1996 after being
bought in 1993 by the Sekar Group of Indonesia and the Mandarin
Oriental group of Hong Kong. Hong Kong-based Mandarin Oriental, which
owns the posh Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong and superlative
The Oriental in Bangkok, now holds 25 per cent of the Majapahit plus
the management contract. The interior of the Majapahit was completely
renovated between 1994 to 1996 at a cost of 35 million dollars, but
the building itself was left untouched as it is a protected historic
site. Luckily for preservationists, the hotel represents more than a
nostalgic throwback to Dutch colonial times. The Majapahit hotel
secured itself a mention in Indonesian history on September 19, 1945,
when a group of Dutch expats raised their flag on the hotel’s main
flagpole to symbolize the retaking of Indonesia as a colony after
World War II. The gesture outraged the Surabaya citizenry, who
stormed the hotel and raised Indonesia’s red and white flag of
independence over its Art Deco lobby instead. Historians claim this
incident sparked the Indonesian independence movement, earning
Surabaya the nickname of the “City of Heroes.” While many historic
Dutch buildings in post-1945 Indonesia have been torn down to make
way for the new, the Majapahit has been preserved thanks to its
revolutionary past. However, in its post-renovation incarnation,
prices have not been set to attract the hoi polloi. “We are the most
expensive hotel in Surabaya, but we’re also the best value hotel in
the Mandarin Oriental chain,” said Gerd Knaust, general manager of
the Mandarin Oriental Majapahit Hotel. The Mandarin Oriental, owned
by the Jardines trading conglomerate of Hong Kong, currently boasts
11 hotels in Asia, three in Europe and nine in the Americas. Prices
at the Majapahit start at 550,000 rupiah (65 dollars) for their
“standard” rooms, of which the hotel has only four. The remaining 146
rooms are suites, including the two-storey, 800-square-metre
Presidential Suite, which claims to be the biggest of its kind in
Asia. Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri and her predecessor
Abdurrachman Wahid have been recent guests, but not too many other
country or company presidents are visiting Surabaya nowadays.
“Unfortunately, the big investment is missing in Indonesia at the
moment, so why should a CEO from a multi-million dollar company come
to Surabaya when there are no multi-million dollar investments,”
noted Knaust. To keep the hotel occupancy rate at its current 45 per
cent average, the Majapahit has been catering more to the Indonesian
market which is less prone to the lure of nostalgia than their
European counterparts. “I prefer the Shangri-La but one of my friends
from Holland likes to stay at the Majapahit because of the nostalgia
thing,” said Winarto, a Surabaya-based businessman. dpa pj blg bw