It’s February 2020 and after a slow couple of months, we are busy.
After nearly 12 weeks of fighting with Booking.com to get our property listed, they are our biggest source of bookings and we’re getting 10/10 reviews.
Bookings are also flowing in from another site, Hostelworld. We knew very little about this booking platform when we first came across it but decided to list with them on the off chance we might pick up a little bit of business from the backpacker crowd coming into Mataram city from the Gili Islands.
Well guess what? The backpacker crowd are travelling in huge numbers, between the Gili Islands in the north and Kuta, Lombok, in the south and we’re picking up traffic heading in both directions. Many stop in Mataram to extend their visas at the Immigration Office, located a stone’s throw from our guesthouse.
Even more are coming to Lombok from Bali, for heaven’s sake, because word has spread that they can extend their visas here in half the time that it takes to do it in Bali. And for roughly half the price.
Dewi’s family, who got behind us when we first took the lease on this place are being run off their feet. But they’re also having the time of their lives.
Like most Indonesians outside of Bali, they’ve had very little contact with westerners and they speak very little English but they are good hearted people, always smiling, always eager to help. And now they’re meeting and greeting travellers from all over the world – French, German, English, Russian, American, Latvian. They very literally have the whole world at their feet.
It’s a win for our guests as well. So many tell stories of staying at hostels and guesthouses where the owners speak little English and seem to have little interest in providing all but the most basic facilities – more interested in taking western style money than offering western style service. But here, they meet an Indonesian family ready to go out of their way to help. To welcome, to include, to accomodate.
Hospitality Indonesian style. Now there’s an idea worth workshopping.
The only cloud on the horizon is a virus, which started in China but which now seems to be spreading rapidly beyond.
The Indonesian Government, to it’s great credit, is one of the first countries to ban inbound flights from China. This happened at the end of January 2020, a good two months before the rest of the world. But they only ban flights coming into Bali. Inbound flights to Jakarta, an important gateway for business travellers and for Indonesians of Chinese heritage, remain open.
Dewi’s family, like most Indonesians, have a healthy aversion to germs and a healthy dislike of anything that might visit a virus upon them and they are completely spooked by this coronavirus. And so, the onus now falls upon me, to prevent Chinese tourists from staying at the guesthouse.
As it happens, we have just received a booking from a Chinese couple on Booking.com. While I try and explain to Dewi that, in spite of her fears, we cant reject a booking on the basis of race and without knowing all of the facts, I’m feeling the pressure of being the one who has to make a call. If I take the booking am I putting my wife and her family at risk? If I prevent the Chinese couple from staying am I breaching my agreement with booking.com? Do they even have the coronavirus? How the hell can I know for sure? I decide to message the Chinese couple in an attempt to get some more information and I call booking.com to find out exactly where I stand in all of this.
But its too late. The Chinese couple have arrived and are standing at the check-in counter, ready to be welcomed.
Publishers Note: Chris and Dewi receive no financial inducements from the multinational organisations mentioned in this post. Instead, they pay hefty commissions for each booking they receive via these platforms.
Until such time as such financial inducements are forthcoming, Chris and Dewi are happy to offer generous discounts to readers who choose to bypass the major booking platforms and book direct.