The tourism industry after the Covid-19 pandemic has begun to stretch again. Various tourism sectors, since two years ago have crawled again. The government collaborates with tourism destination managers and various components hand in hand to reorganize governance and also its elaboration. It is undeniable that the main reason for the elaboration of tourism in Indonesia is clearly closely correlated with economic improvement.
This is based on a fairly basic premise, that these tourism businesses and activities can provide business opportunities and increase extensive employment opportunities for the local community. The development of tourism as an industry in Indonesia has nourished the businesses of other interrelated sectors, such as hotels, restaurants, travel agencies, tourist transportation, and not to forget souvenir shops with their craft industries.
Dollars spent by tourists on hotel accommodation, eating and drinking at restaurants, sightseeing or tours to tourist attractions, and buying souvenirs for souvenirs are foreign exchange receipts for the country. Further scanning, communities around tourist destinations can compete to sell handicraft merchandise and offer various services to tourists.
Usually, artists or craftsmen only serve the needs of the village community for the purposes of ritual ceremonies or social needs of the people in their village. But with so many tourists coming, many creative ideas emerged from artists to produce products that will be offered to tourists. Within these limits, the quality of handicraft items produced can still be maintained as an achievement of high-quality artistic creativity which indicates that the response of the community including artists is quite high to tourist arrivals (Chrity Widyawati, 2018).
Without realizing it, over time, as a result of the large demand of tourists and the elaboration of technology, craftsmen, began to meet the demand of merchants or souvenir shops to meet the tastes of tourists. Like when tourists visit Borobudur Temple, they will generally be interested in crafts that show replicas with narration of Buddhist stories, such as Jataka or Avadana.
Similarly, with traditional performing arts. If tourists come to a Tourist Destination Area (DDW), since getting off the plane to the hotel, dinner at a restaurant or local tour time, tourists will be treated to various kinds of arts as entertainment. Professional travel agencies try their best to satisfy tourists. Here tourists are treated like a king.
Art Tourism
As is known, the promotion of Indonesian tourism sent abroad is quite successful. Each of these art performances always gets a warm welcome in the hope that later it can boost tourist visits to Indonesia. For tourists who come to Indonesia, art performances are usually prepared in collaboration between Travel Agencies and art groups in each tourist destination.
With a fairly high frequency of presentation, often the art conventions that should be applied are often violated by artists. Over time, the integrity of the art building can fade. Staged performing arts orientation refers only to the tastes of tourists. For example, in traditional dance standard techniques, there need to be stages of forward beksan (the beginning of the dance begins), inti beksan (core dance), and mundur beksan (finished dance). However, due to the demand of tourists, they are requested to only dance at the advanced stage of beksan. If this phenomenon is left unchecked, there will be a reduction in the level of art, including philosophical buildings that have been outlined for generations from its creators.
Alternative Solutions
From various cases that occur in Indonesia, art with tourism is like a double-edged sword. In addition to having a positive impact, namely being able to provide business opportunities, expanding employment opportunities, artists can develop their creative process which is very beneficial both from an internal and external perspective.
While the negative impacts, as feared by the public, include due to the rapid interest of tourists, then in their work, artists no longer take into account the idealism of the work created, but only profit-oriented, namely getting large financial benefits in a fast time.
To reduce these negative impacts, all tourism actors ranging from managers, travel agencies, communities, governments, and various related parties need to make accommodative breakthroughs so that tourism impacts are more likely to be positive. As for the negative impact, it is necessary to find a breakthrough solution that is effective and efficient.
In an effort to anticipate the negative impact of the tourism industry, it is necessary for everyone to learn from the theory developed by J. Maquet, an anthropologist from the United States in his Introduction to Aesthetic Anthropology (1971). In theory, it is asserted, with the birth of the tourism industry in an area, other art forms will be born in addition to existing art forms. The category of art that already exists as a product of the local community and the results are used for their benefit is called art by destination.
Meanwhile, when there is a collegial relationship between the community that owns the art and the tourism industry that wants an art form from the community, the local community will create art products that fall into the category of acculturation art or tourist art. Furthermore, because tourists, especially foreign tourists, only visit a tourist destination in a short span of time.
While they want to be able to enjoy as many cultural products as they visit. For this reason, tourist art products have specific characteristics, including miniature, replicas of the original, full of variety, not sacred, short duration (for performing arts), and affordable prices for tourists.
Given that tourism art is a synergy between the art domain and the tourism domain, it is hoped that the tourism domain will not dominate, thereby reducing the original artistic value. Do not let the tourism domain that is more concerned with financial value swallow the domain of art. As for the tips that need to be done, the theoretical concept from Maquet can be implemented in the form of regulations agreed upon by all components, be it the government, tourism managers, travel agencies, artist communities, tourism awareness groups, and various other components.
Regulations that are the result of this joint dialogue can be facilitated by the government in forming regional regulations in which the dictum needs to be sorted between destination art (original community art that has not been packaged) and tourist art. Including regulations that regulate the boundaries of tourist art that takes from destination art so that at the level of implementation it can be arranged in such a way in the hope of building mutual comfort.
Author: Ch. Dwi Anugrah, Head of Ganggadata Art Studio Jogonegoro Village, Mertoyudan District, Magelang Regency