UNS – The Master Program in Economics and Development Studies (MESP) Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS) Surakarta held online discussion under the theme Visiting Lecture Tourism and Environmental Economic inviting Agni Alam Awirya, M.S.E. as speaker on Thursday (7/5/2020). The event attended by 24 participants who are mostly MESP students and several faculty members. The discussion aims to exchanging ideas about tourism economic and environmental research that has been conducted by the speaker.
Agni stated that the primary problem of tourism and environmental economics is that it is a public good with externalities which makes it difficult to estimate, although there are several evaluation methods that can be applied to estimate such as Travel Cost Methods, Hedonic Price, Contingent Valuation, and Benefit Transfer.
“The main problem of tourism and environmental economics is that tourism economic is a public good with externalities which we might experience difficulty to estimate,” explained Agni.
Further, Agni explains that environmental protection can be done by involving larger community. The community must be active in maintaining the environment while reaping benefits from the tourism. The development of tourism is an effort to improve community welfare around the tourism destination.
Additionally, tourism can be organized well. For example, in Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta (DIY), there is Tourism Awareness Group (Kelompok Sadar Wisata – Pokdarwis) which take a role in organizing tourism. Tourism management can establish partnership with Higher Education (PT) that involve students in Kuliah Kerja Nyata (KKN) program.
In this discussion, Agni argued that there are 3 things that can be strived to preserve the tourism environment including by imposing higher tourism rates for visitors for the cost of managing the tourism environment.
“Tourism economic is not limited to the experience of visiting a place, but there is social and emotional responsibility to take care of the visited place, including the willingness to pay higher. The role of tourism economic is to cut down the negative aspects of mass tourism,” explained Agni.
Further, it is mentioned that the indicator of sustainable tourism can be established by optimum use of environmental resources, respecting cultural authenticity of the community, and provide equally distributed social and economic benefits for all stakeholders including stable employment opportunities and contributing to poverty reduction.
On the other hand, Agni explained that the effort to increase visitation should not rely on the main attraction, but it is also important to develop the supporting tourism area (peripheral area). The development of peripheral area is expected to increase choices of tourism destination, which will increase tourist’s stay and encourage local economic development by utilizing the increasing momentum of tourist visits.
Mentioning on the condition of tourism destination during the COVID-19 pandemic, Agni considers that with this pandemic, there is natural balance that occurs. Natural tourism destinations are fresher and cleaner. After the pandemic, people can choose natural tourism as an interesting destination to be visited. Humas UNS/Zalfaa