Community based tourism in Nagari Lawang, West Sumatera: Participation Approach Analysis

¹ Faculty of Economics, University of Andalas Padang
² Research and Development Agency of West Sumatera
³ Faculty of Fisheries and Marine Science, Brawijaya University
⁴ Departement of Aquatic Resource Management, Trunojoyo University Malang, Indonesia

^* Corresponding author: wempie_y@yahoo.com

Abstract

Community-Based Tourism (CBT) is one of the emerging tourism models in the last few decades as an alternative to mass tourism in all over the world. This can be categorized as sustainable tourism because it includes local people participation, and conservation. Lawang Village (known as Nagari Lawang) is one of the village in the West Sumatera Indonesia that has been trying CBT since 2012 with rich potential tourisms: culture, nature, adventure, traditional culinary, and handycraft. However, this is not as easy for CBT conducted sucessfully benefiting stakeholders because of two major dominated private-owned tourism objects. Initally the CBT was promoted and initiated by one of the owner of private tourism, now it is just has lost its power and continuity and faced problems such as lack of human resources, loss global promotion, and finally the collaps of many homestays that have been designed before. However some local economic activities like traditional beverage production called “tebu lawang” and traditional gift shop are still running well. The purposes of this study are to find the community participation level in CBT Lawang and to determine the proper policy to recover CBT’s profitable business. To achieve the study purposes this research used qualitative research design through Focus Group Disucssion and SWOT Analysis. Primary data were collected through observation, interview, and focus group discussion (FGD). The study results shows that based on Arnstein Participation Theory, CBT Lawang lies on the second step of participation where local people support tourism but has no access to resolve problems. Based on the SWOT analysis, the local government rules needed to regulate private tourism object in order to evade competition and to strengthen cooperation with CBT.