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he booming social media like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram has been used by many Indonesians to promote the country’s beauty to the outside world. However, speakers at a discussion here on Wednesday said the promotion should involve support of conservation through ecotourism and the empowerment of locals in the promoted areas.

Sigit Tri Wibowo, the founder of Instagram account @folkindonesia through which many tourist attractions in Indonesia have been promoted worldwide, spoke of the “digital diplomacy” with which the account had successfully promoted Tebing Keraton — a famous cliff in West Java.

“Two years ago, when we first posted a photo of Tebing Keraton, it was not as famous as it is right now,” said the founder of the account that has nearly 300,000 followers.

The internet and social media can be considered “villains” in tourism if people do not use them wisely, speakers said during the seminar.

“Because of technology and social media, all of sudden traveling experiences a boom [...] but the negative impact from the travel trend is that many people who come to the tourist destinations think they don’t have the responsibility to take care of the area. They throw garbage everywhere,” said travel blogger Fiona Callaghan.

To prevent further damage, promotion of the country should focus more on ecotourism, the speakers said at the talks hosted by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Central Jakarta.

A deputy with the presidential staff in charge of social, cultural and ecology issues, Yanuar Nugroho, said it was important to empower local communities to oversee tourism as they were the people who best understand their environments and how to manage them.

“Take Bali. How many people who originate from Bali are engaged in tourism? And how many of them are from outside Bali? The local people in Bali are getting ousted,” he said.

Ecotourism tries to let local communities engage more in the tourism sector, Yanuar said.

What the government can do to boost ecotourism is by informing local communities about the positive and negative impacts of having many tourists visit their places and inviting investors to put their money in particular tourist destinations, Yanuar told The Jakarta Post.

“The local people need to know that on one hand tourism can increase their incomes, but on the other hand they are forced to cater to the visitors’ needs,” he said.

“Therefore, such issues need to be discussed in advance before a place becomes a tourist destination,” Yanuar added.

Callaghan, who is known as a travel promoter, said promoting ecotourism is vital as it “helps us conserve and preserve nature”.

She cited as an example of successful ecotourism a national park in Brazil.

She said the local people there used to hunt endangered animals in the national park; however, the Brazilian government has trained them and increased their awareness of endangered species.

“The local communities [in Brazil] now help to preserve their nature,” she added.

Indriani Setiawati of the Indonesia Ecotourism Network said locals in Tangkahan in the Mount Leuser National Park, North Sumatra, who were mostly illegal loggers, have shifted to ecotourism.

“The youth realized they would run out of wood if they continuously illegally logged, so the people decided to earn money from tourism,” she told the Post.

She added that the park authority and the tourism agency in Tangkahan encouraged locals to benefit from tourism, as long as they helped to protect the 17,000-hectare area. (vny)