Remote and underdeveloped regions in Indonesia offers abundant of potential tourist attractions, particularly its natural landscape and local culture and products. Tourism sector is one of the key sectors contributing to foreign currency earnings and job creation in Indonesia. In addition to this, as pointed out by UNWTO, tourism sector engages a high share of youth and women (54% of the workforce) making it crucial sector that could contribute to women empowerment. Though COVID19 pandemic hits this sector hard, however, BAKTI KOMINFO views this as an opportunity to promote and build a resilient tourism sector that benefits the remote and underdeveloped areas using ICT. BAKTI KOMINFO implemented several interventions since 2019 to assist the local communities and tourism business actors through complementary activities, which included two main pillars:
- Promotion and inclusion of community-based tourism businesses to online tourism platform and marketplace. Approximately ~200 local wisdom-based tourism packages are marketed, and 500 inventories of local tourism businesses are exhibited in digital platform for tourism.
- Capacity building for tourism actors and stakeholders, which included training for tourism actors to develop and sell attractive virtual tour packages and foreign language (English) training. A total of 250 people received this training producing more than 200 tour packages.
In a relatively short period of time, this program has managed to achieve tangible results for the program beneficiaries. Several local tour operators and guides as training recipients have been able to apply their newly obtained skills and knowledge in creating virtual tour products and receive income from the sales and rental of the virtual tour packages. In addition to this, the program also resulted other positive effects, in which the beneficiaries found motivation and confidence to creatively develop attractive virtual tour products and disseminate their knowledge to the youth in their own communities.

https://www.impactadventures.travel/

• Indonesia

• Youth
• Older persons
• Women
• Indigenous and nomadic peoples
• The unemployed
• The poor
• Remote and rural communities

This program has demonstrated effectiveness using the right strategy and approach under the conditions and characteristics of the target population in the remote and underdeveloped areas in Indonesia. This approach led to successful program outcomes. First, the program ensures that utilization of ICT should not become an additional burden for the program beneficiaries. Hence, the program provided simple methods and techniques for photo and video editing using existing gadgets that the participants own. This has greatly facilitated the learning process. Second, the program transferred the novel yet valuable knowledge and skills to the participants on how to build a product that is attractive for the market using demand-driven approach. This resulted to the production of virtual tour packages that are marketable for both domestic and international market. Aside from the technical knowledge, the program also equipped the participants with foreign language (English) training that greatly boost their confidence in creating the virtual tour packages and readiness in welcoming foreign tourists. Third, BAKTI KOMINFO connected the program with its market as well national priority program by the Government. Recognizing the potential market of adventure tourism that appeals to international tourists, BAKTI KOMINFO collaborated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Embassies to tap into the international market. Furthermore, BAKTI KOMINFO also aligned the program with the national program and priority areas under the National Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy.
The approaches and strategies that this program has taken could offer valuable insights for other stakeholders who want to replicate the program particularly for disadvantaged communities. Overall, the program has managed to put the right pieces altogether to achieve good results within a relatively short period of program implementation.

As tourism become one of the Government of Indonesia’s priority sectors for economic recovery and rebuilding, the Government has allocated sufficient budget for infrastructure development particularly in remote and underdeveloped regions to ensure inclusive development. The National Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy had issued its five-year plan and priority through Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy Regulation No. 12/2020, and simultaneously launched a national program for tourism recovery, namely Super Priority Destination (Destinasi Super Prioritas). BAKTI KOMINFO supported this national priority through the inclusion of remote and underdeveloped areas within the Super Priority Destinations, creating a concerted effort in ensuring that no one is left behind. The collaboration with the National Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy also ensures sustainability of the results as the Ministry continues to promote tourism in the areas of intervention and connect them to potential domestic and international tourists as well as their own program through local tourism services.
After the first year of program implementation, BAKTI KOMINFO also learned that delivering skills training to program beneficiaries would not be enough to ensure full participation and impact.
Another key factor of sustainability is related the program beneficiaries targeting. BAKTI KOMINFO aims to ensure that the communities in remote and underdeveloped areas are not left behind and hence priority was given to the community-based businesses. For example, instead of merely engaging big tour operators to develop tour packages for them, the program really targeted local businesses such as local tour guides. At the same time, they learned the importance of preserving their environment and tourist attractions to enjoy a long-lasting benefit for them and for their communities and became the local sustainable tourism champions.

Ensuring that remote and underdeveloped regions experience economic growth that benefits all its community members is a crucial goal in sustainable development. Tourism in remote and underdeveloped regions held enormous potential that could deliver equitable distribution of benefits to communities, contributing to poverty eradication and social development. Under this pandemic situation, however, innovative strategy is needed to act as an enabler of growth via tourism promotion and development for tourism business actors in the remote and underdeveloped regions. This program leverages ICTs as the innovative strategy that allows the local tourism businesses to survive and thrive under a global pandemic that hits tourism sector hard. Focusing on impact adventures and community-based tourism development that highlights and preserve local wisdoms and cultures, the program is aligned with not only the future of tourism as well as national and international development agenda. The Government of Indonesia via the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy have set up a national agenda and program to support the tourism sector. BAKTI KOMINFO’s tourism initiatives in remote and underdeveloped regions is aligned with the national tourism strategy as well as its tourism destination priority areas, contributing to the following targets: (i) improvement of quality and quantity of human resources in tourism and creative economy, (ii) improvement of contribution of tourism and creative economy to the local economic resilience, and (iii) improvement of competitiveness of national tourism destinations. As a result, the program has managed to achieve tangible results within a relatively short period of time, for example increasing the income of local tourism business through the development of virtual tours. This success demonstrates the possibility in advancing sustainable development when a program that leverage ICT is designed appropriately to the local context and bring benefit directly to the micro and small enterprises.