The Effectiveness of Tourism Policies in Improving the Community Economy in The Ciletuh Palabuhanratu Geopark Area

Abstract

Geopark is a region development management concept that has a geodiversity (geological variety), biodiversity (biological variety), and cultural diversity (culture variety). As a UNESCO avowed tourism object, the developing of Geopark has to be the best. The key to the success of Geopark is by synergizing five major components, which is: community representing society in the region, the role of local government and central government, colleges or universities represent academic element, entrepreneur represent BUMN sector as well as private sector, and mass media as promotion media. These five components must be in one vision and mission in developing all of the potential resources in Geopark by prioritizing the principles of conservation, education, and sustainable development. Unfortunately, these five components have not been truly synergized, especially the slowness of government in producing policies and regulations also the ineffectiveness of implementing those policies and regulations. Through synergizing the vision in developing Geopark, sooner or later the management and development in Geopark Ciletuh will have clear and directed target achievement. So, the purpose to honor the Earth deeply will be achieved, and by empowering the society, the objective to build stable economy in Geopark will also be achieved. The method used for this research is qualitative descriptive with Miles & Huberman method to sort collected data from informant using purposive sampling and snowball sampling, which later validated through triangulation, and then reduction, then display the data and lastly drawn the conclusions. Later on, the result of the research using those methods stated above will be in narration developing each potential tours and explained descriptively.