E-COMMERCE: A TOOL TO ENHANCE SMALL MEDIUM TOURISM ENTERPRISES

摘要

Tourism is a highly competitive industry and one of the fastest growing industries in the world. Developing countries have diverse reasons to use tourism as a strategy towards development. Developing countries have been using tourism to generate highly sought after foreign exchange to handle the problems of trade imbalance many of them are facing. Other reasons are to achieve international status, which symbolizes the country's ability to stand on the global stage, using tourism as a mechanism to co-integrate and unify countries that have multi-ethnic population and used as a platform where public money is invested in attempt to enhance the socio-economic wellbeing of deprived local population. The ICTs revolution also has a significant impact to the world tourism industry. However, this Internet revolution is viewed as a double-edged sword for entrepreneurs and small business owners. Through the effective use of e-commerce, small and medium tourisms Enterprises can access new markets and serve new customer. Yet, it will thrust them into a whole new marketplace, where they will experience increased competition from other business and well-established giant that come from well outside of their normal market reach. Therefore, small and medium tourism enterprises (SMTEs) have to adopt innovative and informed e-marketing strategies to be distinct and profitable. In the last three decades, Yogyakarta has grown rapidly as a tourist centre and becoming the third most visited destination by international travellers in Indonesia (after Jakarta and Bali). One potential tourist attraction in Yogyakarta is the region Giriloyo Hamlet, Village Wukirsari, Imogiri, Bantul regency, Yogyakarta (DIY). The potential products of Wukirsari village are the tomb or graves of the kings of Mataram as a tourist destination, batik as a souvenir, learning batik as a study tour project, and also its traditional foods and drink. However, information about Wukirsari village and its attraction is not yet disseminate regularly by Internet, although there are several static website that gives information about Wukirsari and offering no e-commerce facilities. Wukirsari itself already have websites that was established by the help of university student that were doing their field project. However, those websites are not well maintained and not up-to-date. These problems arise because they don't have the skilled human resource for maintaining the website after the student finished their field project. In addition, there are limited telecommunication and internet connection network (infrastructure) in Wukirsari. Policy makers and the SMTEs should work together to increase awareness of e-commerce through training and education for stakeholders, employees and consumers. E-commerce cannot be implemented without empowering and enabling tourism stakeholders to take advantage of new Internet and e-commerce technologies. Especially the case of Wukirsari, it has big opportunities to market itself, both as tourist destination place and its batik through internet. Therefore the partnership between the academics, the community and the policy maker is crucial.