LEGAL CHALLENGES IMPEDING THE DEVELOPMENT OF LOCAL WISDOM-BASED WELLNESS TOURISM POTENTIAL

Abstract

Wellness tourism carries great potential for further development in Indonesia and revitalizing the collapsed tourism sector following the outbreak of COVID-19. With the natural beauty and cultural diversity, wellness tourism based on local wisdom can serve as the main objective of tourism in Indonesia. Nevertheless, legal certainty remains problematic since it hampers tourism development, considering that there are no regulations regulating wellness tourism. With a normative method and a statutory approach, this research finds impeding normative issues in the existing regulations, requiring remarkable improvement to allow for harmonization with specific regulations to regulate wellness tourism. This issue is covered by several legal purviews, namely tourism, consumer protection, and personal data protection. The recommendation of the normative construction offered in this study encompasses licensing, consumer protection, and personal data protection issues, all of which can be framed under one specific law similar to those of the prevailing law governing medical tourism services.