Learning From Goa Pindul: Community Empowerment through Sustainable Tourism Villages in Indonesia

This study aims to reveal the success of community empowerment based on sustainable tourism in Goa Pindul, Indonesia. This study adopted the interpretative phenomenological analysis approach to understand the village community empowerment process phenomenon. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine (9) research participants from the Goa Pindul tourism village community. The findings of this study indicated that tourism-based community empowerment is started with awareness- raising through socialization and community service, followed by capacity building through various needs-based tourism management training and the formation of tourism awareness groups that are given to manage their potential and evaluate their development. This tourism-based community empowerment is carried out while still paying attention to environmental and cultural sustainability in society's lives. Youth involvement is optimized to support sustainable tourism villages.