Local Community Readiness to Implement Smart Tourism Destination in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Local economic development for relatively long period of time. Tourism also allows rapid recovery of local economy after COVID-19 outbreak. Amongst different kinds of approaches for tourism development, smart tourism destination (STD) has been widely believed as an excellent approach to rapidly recover tourism sector during post-pandemic. STD concept also allows improvement of adaptive capacity that is critical to anticipate any future disturbances including the unpredicted ones. However, a question remains regarding the readiness of local communities for implementing STD. Therefore, this research aims to address this gap by examining the readiness of managers of community-based tourism in the Special Region of Yogyakarta province, Indonesia. An online survey was conducted to collect data from various community-based tourism destinations located in this region. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics to measure the overall readiness of community-based tourism to implement STD. For triangulation purpose, interviews were conducted to complement the online survey.