Sustainable nature tourism development through ICT implementation: A case of Indonesian Pines Village

Economic, social, cultural, natural and environmental utilization for the current generation without compromising future generation have become core goal of the tourism industry to achieve sustainability. However, achieving sustainability is still a big challenge for the global tourism industry including Indonesia. Information communication technology (ICT) offers innovative approaches in marketing, system and process development toward sustainable tourism. The objective of the research is to investigate the sustainability of the current natural tourism and the effect of ICT implementation toward sustainable tourism. Direct observation was conducted to pines forests in Central Java to determine the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the nature tourism industry. The study uses 25 sustainability tourism indicators to evaluate the sustainability level of the tourism villages. Three strategies including Community empowerment, ICT development and human capacity building have been found to offer potential benefits to the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the pines tourism villages.