Policy Strategy for Sustainable Management of Mangrove Ecotourism in Siak Regency, Riau Province, Indonesia

Abstract

Siak regency, Indonesia, has more than two hundred-thousand-hectare mangrove areas. Local community for all this time has been developed mangrove areas as ecotourism, but they still lack sustainable management to maintain it. Therefore, this study aims to promote strategies' policy for the sustainable management of mangrove ecotourism in the Siak regency. The research was conducted from July 2019 to July 2020 at 3 locations of mangrove ecotourism, which involved 30 respondents, consisting of 21 people to assess the SWOT analysis and 9 experts to assess AHP. For generating the sustainable policy strategy, A'WOT, a combination of AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) and SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats), was applied. The SWOT data in mangrove ecotourism management includes strengths (2.797), weaknesses (-0.22), opportunities (3.668), and threats (0.149). The results showed that there were six policies needed to excuse. From these policies, the opening opportunities for investors for ecotourism development policy (0.243), improving facilities and infrastructure policy (0.194), providing business training on ecotourism policy (0.178), increasing ecotourism promotion policy (0.111), establishing cooperation between government and stakeholders policy (0.97), and maintaining mangrove ecosystem policy (0.79). It was concluded that mangrove ecotourism in Siak regency required priority funding to develop facilities and ecotourism's business training to cultivate sustainable management of mangrove ecotourism. Corporation between the government and stakeholders was needed to accelerate the realization of the policies.