Agrotourism as an alternative form tourism in Bali
I GUSTI BAGUS RAI UTAMA

Abstract

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This study discusses the general preview of tourism and agriculture in Bali, the opportunities and barriers of agrotourism development in Bali, stakeholders' opinions concerning the development of agrotourism in Bali, agrotourism contributions toward economy and social situation improvements of the local communities, and contributions of agrotourism toward contribute for sustainable tourism development.
This data collected through survey method using questionnaires distributed to 60 respondents from four groups of farmers comprise: Bayung Gede, Candikuning, Blimbingsari, and Pelaga Villages as samples. This study also used 35 expert respondents who come from each local community, universities, NGOs, and local governments. The data are descriptively and statistically analysed using SWOT analysis.
This study finds that (1) the most potential opportunity of agrotourism is increasing family, followed by employee involvement, generating tourism income and increasing value of the village; (2) the hardest barriers of agrotourism development in Bali is inadequate infrastructures, other barriers are limited public facilities, imperfect human resource skills, scarce investments, and insufficient government supports; (3) the ecological resources particularly lakes, social life especially farmers and their lives, and cultural resources such as unique traditions are the strength factors of agrotourism development in Bali; (4) lacks of government support, investment, infrastructures, and human skills are weakness factors; (5) generating related tourism businesses are the most potential opportunity of agrotourism development in Bali. Other opportunities generated from agrotourism are providing local employments, increasing family incomes, and increasing value of the village; (6) degradation of natural resources regarded as the riskiest threat of agrotourism development in Bali. The second most serious matter is land using problems. Other threats are pollutions, host attitude changes, increasing criminalities, and tradition commercializations; (7) agrotourism contributes lots in improving the economy of the local communities. The contributions are on agricultural product improvements and stimulations of related tourism enterprises; (8) agrotourism helps improving the social situations particularly poverty alleviation, decreasing unemployment, and declining urbanization; (9) nature conservation is the greatest contribution toward sustainable tourism development in Bali. Other contributions are visitor increase and generating economic income.
Based on the findings, the recommendations are formulated as follows: (1) promote the uniqueness of each village to strengthen the destination by combining with other related activities to reach the goals of agrotourism. (2) propose agrotourism to the provincial government and national government. (3) develop agrotourism using the local indigenous and uniqueness and apply the principles of sustainable tourism development. (4) government empowerment, investment in agricultural sectors, infrastructure development, human skill improvement, public facilities development, and local communities empowerment and involvement need to be immediately committed to apply an ideal agrotourism in Bali.

Keywords: uniqueness, opportunities, barriers, stakeholders, farmers

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