At Antatour Central Park Jakarta, the excellent service makes up for the shop’s untidiness
PRESENCE The shop is small but strategically located on the lower ground level of Central Park Mall, where a supermarket, restaurants, food stalls, banks and money changers are located – one of the busiest floors in this posh shopping mall.
The sign is easily spotted above the entrance. Unlike many travel retailers in malls, the retail shop is very welcoming and without glass walls and glass doors in front so people can just come in. There are three round tables, each with two chairs for guests and one travel consultant equipped with a computer, and extra seats for waiting customers. A long desk near the entrance had brochures for browsing, and more brochures advertising available promotional packages were scattered on the travel consultants’ tables. The travel consultants would print itineraries when guests ask for details.
APPEARANCE The travel consultants were young and looked neat in their uniforms. They greeted customers with smiles and were quick in attending to them.
There were a couple of other guests while I was there, and from their conversations with guests and how they responded to my various questions, the travel consultants were clearly knowledgeable about the products. They could suggest which tours were suitable for children and which ones for elderly travellers.
EASE Jakarta is notorious for its traffic and Jalan S Parman where Central Park Mall is located is no exception. However, the mall is part of the Podomoro City mixed-use development, making accessing the development’s hotel, apartments, restaurants and entertainment facilities easy. The shop also enjoys direct access to the TransJakarta fast track bus stop across the road from the mall.
SUGGESTIONS It is a good move to produce brochures for people to know what is on offer, but the shop could arrange the brochures on standing rack, or put them in an open box to look neat, instead of having them scattered on the desk and around the travel consultant’s working table.
There was a computer screen and keyboard placed near the entrance. I was not the first to be curious and interested in what was on the screen, but a note near the set up read: “Not for public use, please contact the management”. In that case, why make it the first thing customers see when entering the shop?
