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K-based budget hotel chain Premier Inn plans to open two hotels in Bali and Yogyakarta, respectively, next year to mark its debut in Indonesia'€™s growing budget hotel market.

Erik van Keulen, senior vice president of development for Premier Inn'€™s Asia Pacific region, said Indonesia was chosen for its expansion due to its fast growing mid-scale market as well as ever increasing domestic and foreign visitor and traveler numbers.

The hotels in Yogyakarta and Jimbaran, Bali, will be the first of 10 properties to be opened in Indonesia in the next few years.

Premier Inn, owned by UK hotel company Whitbread, plans to open more properties in Bali'€™s Denpasar and Benoa, Van Keulen said at a press conference in Jakarta.

Outside Bali and Yogyakarta, Van Keulen said the company aimed to build hotels in Makassar in South Sulawesi, Surabaya in East Java, Samarinda in East Kalimantan, Bogor in West Java and two others in Jakarta.

'€œIn total, there will be 10 hotels with 1,452 rooms developed in Indonesia by the end of 2016. We see that Indonesia represents a phenomenal opportunity for us, because it will have the largest number of Premier Inns among ASEAN countries,'€ he said.

Premier Inn Indonesia will join the company'€™s growing portfolio of properties worldwide as it plans to have 50 hotels with 10,000 new rooms in the Middle East, India and Southeast Asia by the end of 2018, Van Keulen said.

Globally, Premier Inn currently operates more than 670 hotels, including five in the Middle East and three in India.

Van Keulen said further that the company would cooperate in several joint ventures with local and national developers for ownership and construction purposes because of an Indonesian law prohibiting foreigners from owning property in the country.

Van Keulen said the joint venture cooperation would enable the company to control the management side as it had also established an office in Jakarta to start development. However, Van Keulen declined to reveal the company'€™s total investment for its Indonesian debut project.

Premier Inn Indonesia head of sales and marketing Linda Muhlis added that the company was ready to compete in the local budget hotel market due to its offerings of '€œthree-star room rates with service and facilities resembling that of four or five-star hotels'€.

Aly Shariff, senior vice president of operations for Premier Inn'€™s Asia region, said the Indonesian Premier Inn would focus on domestic travelers who were looking for quality service and '€œvalue for money'€.

'€œThe Indonesian population is discerning, with high expectations and demand for trusted, valued and branded products. They are also traveling more nowadays. That is why we are aiming for that consistent demand of value for money and international products,'€ Shariff said.