Sustainable Tourism Industry Concept and Implementation: Evidence from Indonesia

Abstract

The tourism sector is the most realistic sector to revive the national economy due to the Covid-19 pandemic in Indonesia.The contribution of tourism gross domestic product (GDP) namely 4.05% (2020) and 4.2% (2021). Foreign exchange for the tourism sector in 2019 amounted to 16.9 billion US dollars while in 2020 it was 3.2 billion US dollars. In 2022, the government targets the tourism sector's foreign exchange value to increase to US$1.7 billion (±Rp. 24 billion). In 2020 the number of foreign tourists reached 4.05 million people but in 2021 it decreased to 1.5 million people. In 2022 the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy (Kemenparekraf) targets around 1.8 million - 3.6 million foreign tourists. Meanwhile, domestic tourists as mainstay tourists are targeted at 260-280 million. In fact, the tourism industry faces problems because some tourist destinations have not implemented the concept of sustainable tourism as a result of tourism infrastructure development ignoring environmental conservation, generating waste, and not involving human resources around the location. So that, in some cases it has marginalized the local population and lost their livelihoods. Sustainable tourism is a holistic concept that includes economic issues, social concerns, and environmental conservation. Several tourist destinations in Indonesia are more profit oriented, government policies as stakeholders are not synergistic, and others. Therefore, the development of the Indonesian tourism sector needs to be redesigned in accordance with the concept of sustainable tourism to be competitive and sustainable.