UNS — During this ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the tourism sector is greatly affected by the movement control order. This circumstance, however, can be momentum for improvement. One of the efforts is to enhance competency and human resources skills in the tourism sector. Responding to this, the Strategic Communication Research Group (RG), Faculty of Social and Political Science (FISIP) Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS) collaborates with the Indonesia Tourism Association (HPI) to organize a storytelling training on Saturday (26/6/2021).
This event is addressed to the tour guides in the great Solo region. The training follows a strict health protocol as it was conducted on a face-to-face meeting at the Fave Hotel Solo Baru. With a total of 25 participants attending the training, the event was started with the concept of storytelling and its writing process to narrate a tourism object. One of the speakers, Astrid Savitri, an author and representative from the Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy (Kemenparekraf), states that storytelling skills are crucial for tour guides, as they can transform boring facts into interesting stories. “People usually do not like to be informed but they love listening to stories,” explained Astrid.
She further elaborates that at least there are five aspects to build destination narration in storytelling. The aspects are setting, characters, conflict, plot, and theme. The five aspects can be mixed and matched according to the tour guides’ tourism sector, thus delivering an impressive and new experience.
The Head of the PKM event, who also a lecturer of the Communication Science Study Program FISIP UNS, Dr. Andre Rahmanto states that tourism objects in the great Solo region are rich with special stories, which can be extended according to the new context.
“The source of the stories are history, heritage, character, place, and event that can become an inspiration for tourism object narration,” Dr. Andre explains.
Dr. Andre added that to this day, tour guides are familiar with this type of storytelling to inform visitors. However, most often, the storytelling delivered is in the form of recurring official information, which tends to be boring.
“With the ‘storynomic’ tagline intensified by the government, then, tour guides must have better skills and creativity in delivering storytelling, thus adding more value to the tourism destination,” elaborate Dr. Andre.
Another presenter for the event, Anjang Priliantini, states that during this pandemic, the Indonesia Government prioritizes domestic tourism under a campaign #DiIndonesiaAja. The Head of HPI Soloraya, Agung Setyodinoto welcomes this event. According to him, this training is crucial for the tour guides in Solo. “Coincidentally, this training is the first storytelling training we get. We hope there will be further assistance, thus we can build more exciting stories about Solo,” he hopes.
At the end of the training, the participants were given the chance to practice establishing and delivering stories through storytelling. Humas UNS
Reporter: Zalfaa Azalia Pursita
Editor: Dwi Hastuti