Innovative settlement for community-based tourism development in labuan bajo, Nusa Tenggara Timur, Indonesia

Indonesia is the largest island country in the world consisted of more than 30 thousand islands with beautiful sceneries and tourism industry has been developed significantly in the last decade. Indonesian government has established a plan to develop tourism sector at a string of islands (Bali-Nusa Tenggara) in the eastern Java as one of the islands namely Bali has attracted both domestic and overseas visitors. Although the islands are very beautiful and the number of visitor has been increased, the percentage of poor people is higher than the other parts of Indonesia. Furthermore, most of the local people have not got benefit from the tourism industry. Thus this research aims to develop a concept of innovative settlement in order to improve the inhabitant’s capacity as well as their living environment as targeted tourism destination. A region, Labuan Bajo in Flores - Manggarai Barat - Nusa Tenggara Timur, is chosen as a sample as this place is well known for its Komodo Island. Komodo is recently included as one of the New Seven Wonders that has been generated more visitors to the island. This qualitative research is conducted through field work in Labuan Bajo- Flores to examine the settlement and the city, as well as to interview key persons from planning board, community leaders, several inhabitants, tourism operators, and tourists. Aside from primary data, secondary data examined include Labuan Bajo master plan, tourism development master plan and Labuan Bajo statistic. The study shows that Labuan Bajo has potentials to become an innovative settlement by developing the community-based tourism.