Big Data Analysis of Sustainable Tourism Competitiveness in East Java Province

Abstract

East Java Province is known as one of Indonesia’s regions that has succeeded in increasing their regional economic growth through tourism activities. The study’s aim was to analyse East Java Province’s sustainable tourism competitiveness potential using review data from the TripAdvisor website in 2019. TripAdvisor reviews are examples of big data for qualitative research that provide information about particular tourism competitiveness, like demographic condition, destinations characteristics, and tourism preference. This research chooses three tourism destinations with high competitiveness in East Java, namely: Jatim Park 2, Ijen Crater, and Bromo, Tengger, and Semeru National Park (btsnp). Tourism activity in East Java has high competitiveness and sustainability. This research found that the sustainable tourism activity with high competitiveness can not only be applied to nature-based tourism destinations, such as Ijen Crater and btsnp but also to artificial tourism like Jatim Park 2. Suppose the related stakeholders can explore and manage them well. In that case, tourism activity in East Java Province can extend tourist spending, their length of stay and finally increase regional income in East Java. To accomplish this goal, we provided four recommendation to related stakeholders in the shape of strategic policies to increase competitiveness capability and economic activity in the East Java Tourism Area. These are the following four strategies: tourism business levelling, local common tourism brand-enhancing, local tourism integration, and cashless transaction promotion.