Sustainable tourism in cultural heritage areas: Dualism between economy and environmental preservation

Abstract

The dynamism of the tourism sector raises the issue of dualism between economic activity and environmental sustainability. Cultural heritage areas are the most vulnerable to massive tourism activities, ranging from vandalism, damage to building structures, and environmental degradation. Lasem is one of the Cultural Heritage Areas in Coastal Rembang that has a high level of vulnerability to developing local tourism activities. This research is related to the focus of the tourism sector with an effort to analyze and provide recommendations for sustainable tourism development in the Lasem Cultural Heritage Area. The research method employed is qualitative, utilizing Self-Assessment and observational checks to understand the status of Sustainable Tourism implementation in the designed location. The analysis method used is descriptive GAP analysis and strengthened by using SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats). The result is the urgency of designing masterplan documents and tourism management concepts based on the balance between sustainable aspects (environment, socio-cultural, economy). This research also indicated the relationship between the development of the Batik Lasem tourism industry and the change of green land use into built-up land in Lasem.