In Indonesia, tourism has been one of the
important industries. Cultural tourism is considered as an integral part of the
Indonesian tourism industry. In Bali, where most of Indonesian Hindus live,
cultural and religious festivals with Balinese dance-drama performances in
Balinese temples, are major attractions for foreign tourists. Beside Bali
Island, cultural tourism also plays an important part in Yogyakarta, a special
region in Indonesia known as the center of classical Javanese art and culture. The
rise and fall of Buddhist, Hindu and Islamic kingdoms in Central Java have
transformed Yogyakarta into a melting pot of Indonesian culture.
This research aims to explain the problem of
tourism in Yogyakarta city, in which it made a less development compared to
tourism in Bali Island. Although both destinations provide similar
characteristics of tourism, but the number of tourists who visited Yogyakarta
is much lower compared to those who travelled to Bali Island. Both Bali Island
and Yogyakarta rely on the excellence of culture and natural attraction to draw
tourists, but Bali Island made succeed to attract high number of tourists,
while Yogyakarta didn’t.
A SWOT analysis was
conducted in order to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and
threats of tourism in Bali Island and in Yogyakarta. In other words, SWOT
analysis was applied because it provides an easy way to understand the
situation of both tourism destinations. Moreover, this research
focuses on two questions: (1) why
foreign tourists prefer Bali Island more than Yogyakarta; and (2) how to
improve the performance of tourism in Yogyakarta.
The research shows that there
are three reasons why foreign tourists prefer Bali Island more than Yogyakarta:
(1) the management of Bali Island is appropriate to the international standard
of tourism destination; (2) the uniqueness of Balinese culture; and (3) sustainable
improvement of tourist attractions, which is guarantee in tourist’s
satisfaction. To achieve the similar success to Bali Island, Yogyakarta should
prepare some improvements on tourism development. There are several marketing
communication strategies which can be done to attract more foreign tourists to
this city: (1) strengthening the
positioning of Yogyakarta city as a cultural tourism destination; (2) product
development; (3) unique package of cultural tourism; (4) marketing mix; (5)
social media marketing; (6) collaboration with stakeholders of industry; and (7)
collaboration with press.
Generally, this research
tries to reveal the key factors to develop tourism of Yogyakarta, and the role
of communication study in the development. Complete result of this research
wishes to provide a contribution to the practice of marketing communication,
especially in the tourism development.
