Strategi Dinas Kebudayaan dan Pariwisata Kota Semarang dalam Upaya Mengembangkan Pariwisata Kota Semarang

Abstract

Tourism is one of the sector that has an important role to succeed regional autonomy, where development and resource utilization and tourism potential is needed. The high tourism potential of Semarang City with 64 tourist attractions should be able to make Semarang City as the tourism destination city and not just a transit city. Department of Culture and Tourism of Semarang City as regional device organization has duties and responsibilities to carry out government affairs particularly tourism affairs. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to describe the phenomenon or the actual circumstances which occured about how the strategy of Department of Culture and Tourism of Semarang City in an effort to develop tourism in Semarang City. The research was using descriptive qualitative research method with documentation and interview as the data collection technique. Targets of the research were government, private, and community who participated in tourism development management in Seamarang City. The main focus of this research was the context of the strategy implementation of Department of Culture and Tourism of Semarang City in an effort to develop tourism in Semarang City, tourism marketing of Semarang City, including the role of society as well as the role of private sector in tourism development of Semarang City. Based on the results overall there were eight strategies of Department of Culture and Tourism of Semarang City in order to develop tourism in Semarang City. Strategies which were successfully implemented were strategy to increase the appreciation of traditional culture to escalate public welfare and strategy to increase the profesionalism of human resources tourism. While the strategies that had not been maximally implemented were strategy to increase the Department of Culture and Tourism apparatus performance, increased the conservation area, sites, objects, and cultural heritage buildings, increased the preservation of traditional cultural art, increased the quality and quantity of tourism destinations, increased the number of visits of foreign and local tourists. Problems and obstacles that were faced by Department of Culture and Tourism of Semarang City in implementing those strategies were the lack of knowledge and educational background about tourism in human resources of Department of Culture and Tourism of Semarang City, a long and complicated bureaucracy process in program planning and the lack of coordination between related Department in managing tourism needs of Semarang City, budget constraints in preserving heritage buildings and improving the quality and quantitiy of tourism destinantions. A lack of enthusiasm and rejection from the community in tourism area management and preservation of traditional culture was also found. The most important thing was the absence of Semarang City branding to help marketing tourism sector by the private parties in Semarang City