Re-Tour Academy

Preparing Community-based Tourism in the Coastal Area of Bulukumba to Build Back Tourism in Regenerative Ways

By Andi Junila Aulia

Re-tour Academy or Regenerative Tourism Academy is a program that aims to help the youth rebuild their tourism-based community in Bulukumba through a regenerative concept of tourism. This program is established by Team PANRITA from South Sulawesi, Indonesia who successfully secured funds from the YSEALI Small Grant Competition 2021 held by East West Center Hawai’I collaborated with The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center University of Montana, Missoula, USA.

The idea of the program itself was first designed out of the team’s own concern for the unsettling tourism in some coastal areas in Bulukumba. Based on their personal experiences, there are quite a number of damaged tourism sites that come as a result of the irresponsible activities of both the locals and the tourists. Also, many coastal areas are polluted with waste, not only from the ones left by the locals and the tourists but also waste brought by the currents. To confirm their hypothesis, the team decided to hold an open discussion with some tourism-based communities as well as expertise and activists in the tourism field.

At the end of the forum, the team was finally able to draw a conclusion and that was the fact that what they have experienced before is also broadly felt by every parties. In addition, the team also found out that many tourism-based communities turn out to be struggling in maintaining and managing sites to create sustainable tourism. Not to mention, the pandemic has also impacted their irregular income to be even more unstable and they happened to not know how to recover from this situation. Looking at these issues surrounding the tourism-based communities in Bulukumba, the team is motivated to encourage the local youth to make a change among their community by creating Re-Tour Academy program.

This program has two main agendas. The first one is the Innovation Challenge Day where 5 selected teams will spend 5 days in training and developing their proposed ideas. Only 3 teams will be funded and selected to get to the next phase that is the Accelerator Program. In this specific step, the 3 teams will have 3 months to implement their projects while still receiving intensive training and monthly mentoring. At the end of the program, the 3 teams will be given the opportunity to present the result of their projects to the future potential sponsors and partners. The application will be opened on 17^th – 24^th August 2021. It will take a big theme, “Preparing Community-based Tourism in the Coastal Area of Bulukumba to Build Back Tourism in Regenerative Ways” with the following sub theme:

• Creative Economy
• Educational Programs
• Social Experiences

For more information, please kindly check to our social media on IG (@retour_academy) and FB page (retouracademy).

The program is expected to address the environmental and tourism issues among the tourism sites in Bulukumba and also to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) particularly SDG point number 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), and 13 (Climate Action).