Local Community Readiness to Implement Smart Tourism Destination in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Abstract

Local economic development for relatively long period of time. Tourism also allows rapid recovery of local economy after COVID-19 outbreak. Amongst different kinds of approaches for tourism development, smart tourism destination (STD) has been widely believed as an excellent approach to rapidly recover tourism sector during post-pandemic. STD concept also allows improvement of adaptive capacity that is critical to anticipate any future disturbances including the unpredicted ones. However, a question remains regarding the readiness of local communities for implementing STD. Therefore, this research aims to address this gap by examining the readiness of managers of community-based tourism in the Special Region of Yogyakarta province, Indonesia. An online survey was conducted to collect data from various community-based tourism destinations located in this region. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics to measure the overall readiness of community-based tourism to implement STD. For triangulation purpose, interviews were conducted to complement the online survey.