English’s Assignment : Balikpapan Hotels Development

Nowadays, we can find a wide variety of hotels in Balikpapan city. If we compare to the past, when Balikpapan still has a small number for its population, according to the oil development era, this town was small and quiet, but now it is not anymore. We can see the big changes and a very fast development of hotel in Balikpapan.

Balikpapan city is the main destination city in East Kalimantan. As we know that Balikpapan is the center of industry and commerce in the province that the city is glowing with better infrastructure than other towns in East Kalimantan.

Many kind of visitors come here for their business or spend their holiday. It can be seen from the increasing number of Balikpapan visitors in the year 2006 reaching 8.682 people and go up equal to 0,92 % compared to year 2005 was only 8.603 people, based on Government statistic report*.

These influencing the development progress of hotel in Balikpapan, because of the visitor who commonly has not any relative in Balikpapan, have to stay in a hotel. All of this factors, attract many investor to plant their money to build a hotel in Balikpapan city.

There are many kinds of hotel in Balikpapan start from lowest level until 5 star hotel which offer us many personal services and amenities to make their visitor feel comfort. For examples are Business Center, Room Service, High-speed Internet, Restaurant, Swimming pool, Concierge, Bar / Lounge, Meeting and conference room etc. But some of four and five star hotel offer us special services like Tennis Court, Golf Course, Spa Bath, Mini Bar, and Banquet Facility.

Some example of hotel in Balikpapan city are Novotel and Aston. Novotel and Aston are four star hotel. They offer free breakfast and swimming pool is provided for their visitor. The visitor can choose their type of room. Like Luxury room with dining table and kitchenette or the cheaper one is standard room which offers the visitor any standard or ordinary services but still considering at our amenity.

The fast hotel development in Balikpapan also has a negative and positive impact. The positive impact is, the city government can get many income money from the investors which may use for build any infrastructure in Balikpapan also to secure and prospering Balikpapan people.

And the negative impact of hotel fast development in Balikpapan will cause the increasing of hotel emulation and the older hotel which still use a traditional and minimum service will collapse and fail to compete with other modern hotel because their management don’t have too much money so they can not provide any special treatments to attract visitors. The other negative impact is, the hotel development will decrease the number of water diffusion area which may cause flood and rare of freshwater.

However, we have to realize, even Fast Development of hotel in Balikpapan can earns a lot of incomes money, government must have coherent behave to restrict the investors. The investors or owner of the hotels must respect the law and the tax payment. So the hotel development will be balance and accorded to the vision and mission of the Balikpapan Government.