Jakarta – Hundreds of workers of the five-star Shangri-La Hotel continued their strike for the third day yesterday, forcing the management to temporarily close their business activities and evacuate guests.

The situation has led the hotel to cancel all its year-end celebrations for Idul Fitri, Christmas, New Year's Eve and the New Year.

The hosts of these parties said they only knew about the problem at the hotel at the last minute when they were informed of the strike by the workers they had hired for the decorations. A wedding and wedding anniversary slated to be held at the hotel on Saturday evening had to be moved to other hotels.

"The hotel management did not inform us about this until a decorator for our party told us that the hotel workers were on strike," the host for the wedding anniversary said.

He added that the management later offered to move the event to Grand Melia Hotel in Kuningan, South Jakarta, on Shangri-La's account, which the family rejected.

The family of the wedding party eventually accepted the hotel's offer and hastily placed notices at every entrance of Shangri-La to notify their guests that the ceremony had been moved to Grand Melia Hotel.

It remained unclear whether the two families would sue the hotel for their failure in informing them of the problem earlier.

On the first day of the strike on Friday, some 20 room guests were at the hotel, while others had been moved to other hotels. On Saturday, all of the 668 rooms and 40 suites were empty.

Striking workers had closed the hotel's entrance gates and placed wooden planks across their latches. The gates were covered with posters and banners expressing their dissatisfaction with the management. The lobby was reportedly crowded with workers, who were seen sleeping, playing cards, and praying.

The hotel's top management and the representatives of its worker's union, in a meeting until late Saturday evening, failed to reach an agreement. The hotel's top management could not be reached for comment.