Implementation Model of Community Based Tourism on Rural Tourism

One alternative to develop the rural economy is by developing the rural tourism. Tourism sector nowadays is considered to be capable to encourage the development of other economy sectors either directly or indirectly [1]. Tourism also contributes in increasing job opportunity and income [2] in which when a tourism development occurs in a region, this may encourage the emergence of job opportunities for the surrounding community because the potential business emerges in line with tourism development. The income of community living around the tourism development will increase with those job opportunities.

Indonesia has rural natural charm and abundant culture in every region with its different uniqueness. It makes Indonesian tourism become one industry which development should be encouraged. According to Teodoro et al. [3], rural tourism is viewed as a strategy for rural development. Tourism is a program that directly touches and involves the community so that it brings many impacts on the local community. This has been proved by Ibanescu et al. [4] in a research conducted in rural area in Rumania, which found that tourism can really contribute to the sustainable growth in rural areas.

The importance of participation of all elements of society including local community in tourism development is stated in the Government Regulation of the Republic of Indonesia Number 50 of 2011 on the National Tourism Development Master Plan for 2010-2025. This regulation states that "Community empowerment is an effort to increase awareness, capacity, access, and community’s role, either individually or in groups, in improving the quality of life, independence and welfare through tourism activities. This is strengthened by the findings from [5] research, which shows that local community participation in decision-making, community empowerment, and community knowledge about tourism affect the sustainability of rural tourism development.

According to Soekarya, tourist attraction potential either with natural or cultural nuances commonly exists in rural areas, in line with the Indonesian society who mostly live in rural areas [6]. Therefore, various potential attractions of tourism should be developed so that the community will get the great benefit related to the existing rural potential by creating the rural tourism area.

In many regions, the government develops rural tourism that in the future hopefully will give high multiplier effect on the village or the surrounding areas. This is in accordance with a research conducted by Škuflić and Štoković [7], which mentions that tourism industry may become a driving force in overcoming the economy problem in a region. Rural tourism and various related programs can be considered as the main axis of village development strategy that can protect the fragile socio-economic order in a short-term, and create the sustainable development in a long-term [8]. The development of rural tourism is considered to be able to boost the community’s economy.

The community’s active involvement can be conducted in rural tourism management as an effort to increase the rural community’s economy by utilizing the existing potentials so that the community-based tourism concept will be very suitable to implement. Community-based tourism is proved as one effort to increase the rural economy [9]. The local community’s involvement in developing the rural tourism is significant as they recognize and understand the potential of their region well. Besides, this involvement is very important to get support and to ensure that the local community will find the appropriate needs and benefit from this program. The implementation of the use of community-based tourism concept is also in line with The Regulation of Minister of Villages, Development of Disadvantaged Regions and Transmigration Number 13 in 2020 on the priority of using village funds in 2021, which has divided villages into 8 village typologies and 18 village SDGs objectives starting in 2021-2030.

Dieng Plateau is one area with a lot of natural tourism potentials in Central Java. Located at an altitude of 2,100 masl with a beautiful landscape, this area becomes the choice of rest area since the colonial era until now. The cool area, the natural environment, supported by various kinds of natural and cultural potentials magically invite people to come. There are some rural tourism in this area that become the destinations for both domestic and foreign tourists. Dieng Kulon Rural tourism, as one of rural tourism in this area, is located in Batur District, Banjarnegara Regency. The location borders Pranten Village, Batang Regency, in the North, and borders Dieng Wetan Village and Sikunang Village, Wonosobo Regency in the East and South, while in the West it borders Karang Tengah Village. Dieng Kulon having an area of about 337,846 Ha with the dominant landscape is the hills that previously were a conservation area but now some have been transformed into potato gardens. There are about 163,603 Ha for agricultural area and 186,9 Ha of protected forest. Specifically, Dieng Kulon Village is located at an altitude of 2093 masl. It is about 55 km far from Banjarnegara city.

The planning of rural tourism in Dieng Plateau area has started from Dieng Kulon Village, which is seen as a place with relatively developed access and availability of facilities compared to other village areas. Besides its strategis location because it is very close to the “main” objects included in zone one in Dieng Plateau tourist zoning map, there are also supporting facilities such as homestays, souvenir stalls, parking area, information facilities, and so on. Some of the existing facilities have been provided by the Dieng UPTD manager under the Tourism Office of Banjarnegara Regency, but there are also other facilities that are prepared by the local community, such as home stays, tourist transportation, etc.

The “Conventional” objects as the tourist attractions to visit Dieng Kulon Rural tourism can be seen in details as follows:

a) Natural tourist attractions: Bale Kambang Lake, Temple Complex, Sikidang Crater, Gasiran Aswotomo, Sendang Sedayu, and Semurup Lake.

b) Cultural tourist attractions: Agrotourism & Living Culture of Dieng community, Frizzy Hair Treatment Cultural Performance (Dieng Culture Festival), Kayu Dewa Batik, Dieng Temple Miniature, Dieng Culinary Tour.

c) Artificial attraction: Adventure Tour.

A lot of attractions in this rural tourism has invited either many domestic or foreign tourists. This certainly brings impact on the increase in economy activities in this rural tourism. The role of Community-Based Tourism in this rural tourism has supported the local community’s welfare. Community-Based Tourism (CBT) Management is also in accordance with the principles in sustainable tourism, which has small scale but is capable to bring great benefit for the local community [10]. This is also delivered by the studies of [11-18]. The community has a big role in the management and providing facilities for the visiting tourists. This certainly becomes a very good example for rural tourism management. Therefore, the aim of this research is to identify the implementation model of Community-Based Tourism that has been conducted in developing Dieng Kulon rural tourism.

The efforts to recognize self-potential have been conducted by the community of Dieng Kulon. This is a very good beginning for them. Various kinds of attractions as the capital in developing tourism such as arts, traditional food, handicrafts, agricultural activities, and traditional children play are “something” that can be packaged as a community tourism offer.The attraction capital should be supported by the community’s awareness to participate and take roles in developing tourism in this area through local tourist institution such as Kelompok Sadar Wisata/Pokdarwis (Tourism Awareness Group). The government should support to establish Pokdarwis in every district or tourist area. Pokdarwis is a social institution bottom-up established as the innitiative of the community to seriously manage the tourism in their region. The awareness in seing themselves and their environment is the basic supply to run the tourist business more seriously in the village. However, it is not easy to make a new step by moving from agricultural economy to service economy. The community should be invited to critically identify various problems either internally or externally.

The results of identifying various potential resources in Dieng Kulon can be classified covering physical, biotic, and socio-cultural components, as seen in the Table 1.

Table 1. Classification of tourism potentials and development opportunities

From the above table, there is a “collective awareness” of the potentials that can be developed, not only opening the homestays. This awareness will make it easier to invite the community to make a plan of rural tourism model in accordance with the locality principle. This will also encourage the roles and readiness of the rural community to be the service business actors, not only become the potato farmers. They are also invited to think that the programs that can be developed in the future do not only rely on the Dieng specialty objects, such as lakes, temples, and craters, but can also be conducted by inviting the tourists on site to the potato garden, to the kitchen, to the farm, and so on, so that there will be an integration between the agricultural and tourism sectors. It means that tourism entering villages does not replace the community’s main economy activity, but even it gives additional alternatives for the farmers’ household to develop the service sector [20]. For the tourists themselves, as long as they live in homestay, socialize, and enjoy the Dieng farmers’ life, they will get new experience they have not got before. In developing the village as tourist object, it should be understood from the beginning that the local community is not the passive object but even the active one. It is in accordance with the applied Community-Based Tourism concept.

A rural environment can be seen both as tourist object and subject. As an object, the village is the aim of tourism activities, while as a subject, it is an organizer in which whatever produced by the village will be directly enjoyed by its community and their active role determines its continuity [21]. The interaction activity intertwined between the tourists as the guests and the community as the host will arise cultural experience. Such a cultural interaction can be intertwined in social community activity, community housing activity either private or communal, coaching and management activity to increase the human resources in skills and administrative management aspect for the rural activities or the tourism activity itself, and the last tourism activity. Tourism activities may include attractions and accomodation [22]. Attraction programs include traditional ceremony program, rural art program, sport program, eating and drinking program, and so on. While for accomodation it needs residence for tourists who want to stay for a while, and this also needs to be considered. Some special residence can possibly be developed as accomodation means by conducting improvement, keeping cleanliness, so that it can fulfill the minimum standard of accomodation seen from health and convenience, covering air circulation, lighting, sanitation, and provision of toilet means.

Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) method was used to produce attraction mapping in rural tourism, which was conducted by the community. The provision of tourist object/attraction is the main thing encouraging the emergence of tourism activity. “Something to see” in the form of attraction should be available to make it tourist object [23]. It is the same thing as what can be presented/offered to the tourists when they stay in a homestay. Through discussions with the community it appears that the community understand about the tourist object as the attraction all this time and also the potential distribution that can be upheld as agricultural-based attraction in Dieng Kulon village. This village that is included in the “shaft” area of Dieng Plateau tourism actually has strategic position supported by the tourism supporting means most of which exist in the area, such as sub terminal, Arjuna Temple complex, food stalls, Withliem meeting hall, and other means. The area of Arjuna Temple complex can be said as the “zero point” of the beginning of tourist service center in Dieng Plateau. The discussion results have found that the community have understanding on resources/attractions frequently visited by the tourists or places where the local guides often ask their tourists to go there, such as Arjuna Temple, Bale Kambang, Kailasa Museum, Bima Temple, and Sikidang Crater. Merdada Lake and other natural objects still belong to Banjarnegara Regency area. This tourist attraction mapping result also provides knowledge about alternative potential of attractions existing in rural areas or by utilizing the local agricultural resources to be upheld as the tourist attraction. It includes Purwaceng agriculture, Bunut guava agriculture, Dutch eggplant, Dieng sheep farm characterized with thick fur, and also manufacturing attraction centers of potato chips, carica pickles, and others. The mapping result with the community then is processed and graphically performed as tourist object distribution map of Dieng Kulon Village area, as presented in Figure 1.

In identifying the Community-Based Tourism implementation, the role connection among the institutions related to rural tourism development should be identified [24]. This step is conducted to give understanding that establishing tourism is not only the community’s responsibility, but the collaboration and partnership can be developed to encourage the acceleration of implementing the tourism development. The environment of Dieng Kulon village is included, too. From the identification that has been successfully developed, Dieng Kulon rural community has also formed a tourist management institution called Dieng Pandawa. Tourism Awareness Group (Pokdarwis) functions as the government partner and the facilitator in implementing and monitoring the tourism activities in Dieng area, particularly those included in Batur District, Banjarnegara Regency. At the beginning the motivation to arrange and establish the tourism activities is more oriented in agricultural tourism. What the Dieng Kulon community has conducted is still an “embryo” including the establishment of Tourism Awareness Group (Pokdarwis) called Dieng Pandawa. Some programs included in Pokdarwis are: tourism order safety Pokja, home industry Pokja (special food), homestay Pokja, tour guide Pokja, art and culture Pokja, agrotourism Pokja, handicraft/souvenir Pokja, marketing Pokja.

Besides Pokdarwis, the result of Focus Group Discussion also produces the identification of other institutions having direct or indirect connection with the community in Dieng Kulon village. When examined further, it can be presented in a matrix (Table 2).

From various identifications conducted through research process, the model of rural tourism development applied in Dieng Kulon that has brought success in this rural tourism can be described in Figure 2.

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Figure 1. Tourism attraction mapping of Dieng Kulon rural tourism

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Figure 2. Implementation model of community-based tourism in developing rural tourism in Dieng area

Table 2. The roles of actors supporting Dieng Kulon rural tourism development

The development of various kinds of attractions either natural, cultural, or artificial in Dieng area are supported by the roles of community, government, private sectors, universities, and media. The implementation model of Community-Based Tourism in developing Dieng Kulon rural tourism is conducted through maximizing the community’s role in pokdarwis and pokja in eight fields. The pokja includes tourism order safety pokja, home industry pokja (special food), homestay pokja, tour guide pokja, art and culture pokja, agrotourism pokja, handicraft/souvenir pokja, marketing pokja.