January 13, 2025
JAKARTA – The Tourism Ministry has confirmed that 12.66 million foreign tourists visited the country during the period of January to November 2024. With December data still being tabulated, the full-year numbers expected to be released in February could be close to 14 million. Though this would be short of the record of 16.1 million tourist arrivals in 2019, the significant rebound indicates a healthy recovery.
During the same period, Thailand recorded 32 million and Vietnam 15.8 million foreign tourist arrivals. Across ASEAN, the tourism sector is nearing pre-pandemic levels. Given the sector’s critical importance to national economies, service sector jobs, local communities and foreign exchange earnings, there should be much reason for celebration.
However, celebrations are muted as countries are counting the cost of overtourism, such as ugly and excessive construction, defilement of sacred monuments, environmental degradation, garbage crises, water shortages and irresponsible behaviors of tourists whose numbers have overwhelmed authorities and infrastructure.
Several of these problems have been observed in Indonesia in the past year with stakeholders from Bali to Lake Toba to Yogyakarta to Manado flagging concerns.
Globally, some of the favorite tourism nations like the Netherlands, France, Italy and Greece in Europe, and Japan, South Korea and New Zealand in Asia Pacific and several others are voicing concerns about the long-term negative impacts created by the current model of tourism.
Under this vast number of international tourists (a huge 1.1 billion globally from January to November 2024), travel to destinations made popular through social media, articles, rankings, campaigns, influencers and word-of-mouth. Low-cost airlines, budget hotels, customized tour packages, minimal visa requirements, group travel, conferences and events are all contributing to the surge.
To be photographed at the trending destination and count likes and hearts seems to be the overriding objective of most tourists. Few are careful about their “garbage footprint” and the cultural etiquette of the country that they are visiting.
With them they also carry their peculiar habits, culinary preferences and ethnic prejudices. The result is that tourism today is increasingly becoming a crowded scramble and careless revelry that is damaging the environment, heritage and privacy of local communities. In short, the current form of tourism is not sustainable.
Indonesia has an opportunity to distinguish itself by prioritizing sustainable tourism development across its many magnificent destinations. In my book The D.E.E.P Framework of Sustainable Tourism Development, I outline four pillars, namely destination uniqueness, eco imperatives, eco stakeholders and priorities and performance. Each pillar has five imperatives which, put together, can provide a comprehensive roadmap.
Destination uniqueness emphasizes the importance of preserving, documenting and promoting a destination’s scientific, environmental, historical, cultural and gastronomic uniqueness. For example, tourists visiting Lake Toba need to have information and access to attractions related to the volcanic caldera and geo sites.
Similarly, they must experience well-preserved icons of Batak heritage like traditional houses, textiles, music, language and folklore. All these apply to Toraja also, along with the added importance of helping tourists learn about and enjoy the wonderful local coffee heritage. Labuan Bajo needs to showcase its environmental heritage comprising unique flora and fauna.
Over two and a half decades ago, when I first visited Bali, hotel managers would proudly advise the local tradition that construction height could not exceed the tallest coconut tree in the vicinity. Today, many of those charming parts of Bali are spoiled by excessive construction of shophouses, mini markets and huge projects putting immense pressure on fragile coastlines.
While Bali remains the crown jewel of Indonesian tourism and a big draw due to its culture, people and diverse attractions, it must reverse previous mistakes by especially addressing the second pillar of sustainable tourism which I call “eco imperatives”.
Under this critical infrastructure (waste management, sanitation, public transport and nature conservation), widespread adoption of the first set of 4R principles of refuse-reduce-reuse-recycle, development of local supply chains and crowd management need to be enhanced. A thorough capacity assessment of each region and refusal of unnecessary new construction licenses must become the norm rather than the exception.
Implementing the second pillar requires collaboration and effort from “eco stakeholders” who form the third pillar. These include the government, private sector, non-government organizations, local communities, academic institutions and youth.
In Yogyakarta and Central Java, for example, there is increasing competition for valuable groundwater resources between hotels and farmers. To prevent the issue from becoming too contentious, it is important for hotels and restaurants to adopt sustainable practices, such as optimizing water use in cooking, cleaning and toilets, in addition to maximizing recycling efforts.
The plastic waste crisis cannot be overcome unless youth learn and practice responsible behaviors of bringing their own reusable water bottles, lunch boxes and cloth bags. MICE events need to use water dispensers, recycled paper packaging and completely stop the use of Styrofoam and single use plastics.
The fourth pillar of “priorities and performance” focuses on implementation. Under the imperatives are heritage valuation, policies and resources, adoption of the second set of 4R principles (recover-restore-revitalize-rebrand), benchmarking and capacity building.
In December, the world saw a wonderful example of this in the painstaking restoration of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, that had been burned down in 2019. The French people clearly believed that the heritage valuation of Notre Dame was much more than the nearly US$1 billion that was incurred to rebuild it.
Indonesia must similarly understand the value of its amazing environmental and cultural heritage. Once correct value is placed on high conservation value, rain forests, mangroves, waterfalls, rare species like orangutans, Sumatran tigers and Bali starlings, as well as ancient Hindu and Buddhist temples and monuments of historical importance, then timebound implementation of sustainable tourism priorities will start to fall into place.
Benchmarking is crucial because sustainability standards are being raised and discerning and responsible customers are spoiled for choice. Indonesia would do well to share and learn from current ideas about developing car free attractions, limiting the number of tourists and reinvesting earnings to continuously improve infrastructure.
A recent visit to Nusa Penida in Bali revealed broken, crater-filled roads, an absence of police and officials to control hordes and widely strewn litter. Such pristine destinations deserve much more than just social media posts. They deserve sustainable tourism development that can preserve their uniqueness for generations to come.