Ethno-Ecotourism in Kulon Progo, Indonesia: A Downstreaming Process of Natural Resources-Based Products with A Touch of Cultural Resources

Abstract

Kulon Progo is a regency in the Special Province of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, which has a remarkable potentials to be developed into tourist attractions due to its wealth of natural and cultural resources. The ethno-ecotourism in Kulon Progo is a new form of sustainable tourism development that combines ethno tourism and ecotourism activities. This concept was currently developed by the World Bank which aims to position indigenous communities as the primary stakeholder of tourism development. Downstreaming is a clustering concept to increase the added value of a product by avoiding the sale of primary forms of natural resources. This study aims to identify the potential tourism activities that will emerge in the process of developing natural resource-based products that are processed into new tourism products through the touch of cultural resources. This descriptive-analytical study using the grounded theory approach. There are a number of data collection methods utilised to undertaken this research. The primary data were collected through a systematic observation, key informants, and in-depth interviews. The secondary data were collected through literature study by using tourism and economic surveys in Kulon Progo Regency. Collected data sets were analyzed by employing interactive model analysis, triangulation, and downstream product approaches with three variables: upstream, midstream, and downstream clusters. The findings indicated that the apparent potentials lie on the processing of natural resource-based products such as cocoa, pennywort leaves, palm sugar, dragon fruit, coffee, and tea, which can be developed into various types of derivative tourism products. The first cluster is upstream or the exploration phase. The tourism activities formed in it, for instance, are the introduction of the type of vegetation, the methods of planting, and the process of farming. The second cluster is the middle stream or the processing phase. The tourism activities are in the form of a workshop on processing raw materials into finished goods. The last cluster is downstream or the packaging phase. The tourism activities are in the forms of the consumption and packaging as souvenirs of the finished products.