MEANING OF PLACE ON ENHANCING RELIGIOUS TOURISM IN THE MASJID RAYA BAITURRAHMAN BANDA ACEH

Abstract

Tourism has an important meaning for a region because of the unique qualities and characteristics of that region. When tourism becomes one of the supports for economic success, people ask whether tourism in the area is worthy of being a tourist spot? one of which is religious tourism, which is a type of tourism that has a close interest in the religious side and places of worship. Religious tourism has its characteristics, both from the environment of the tourist area, the physical buildings, and the local culture of the local community. Banda Aceh is the capital of Aceh Province which has the nickname Veranda of Mecca, this city has a religious tourism area which is the research area, namely the Baiturrahman Grand Mosque, which is now a religious tourist attraction that is the pride of the local community. The meaning of a place is very important in developing tourism, the presence of distinctive characteristics is the attraction of the place, and it has a lot of knowledge and experience for tourists. The meaning of a place for local tourists and foreign tourists will be different, due to the desire to visit and the experience of being there. Therefore, with research to find out the meaning of tourist attractions for visitors and religious tourism destinations, there will be a comparison of the level of visits by local and foreign tourists, so that the meaning of the place can be seen from the visiting experience, building characteristics for visitors and social interactions. This issue is a complex matter to discuss. As for what will be researched in this place, attachment research is the meaning of place. This research aims to determine the meaning of place attachment to the Baiturrahman Grand Mosque in Banda Aceh on the development of religious tourism. The type of research applied in this research is a mixed method of qualitative and quantitative nature obtained from literature studies, distributing questionnaires, field observations, and interviews; distributing questionnaires to 100 respondents, namely tourists and local communities; carrying out field observations at the research location; and conducted in-depth interviews with eight main informants, namely local community leaders, tourism practitioners, government officials, and academics. This will be analyzed using qualitative descriptive methods to produce comparative findings through the data obtained. This literature review can be applied by stakeholders as an evaluation tool in developing tourism, especially religious tourism in an area.