Sultan Kurnia AB, Hiroshima University , Japan
Wulandari RETNANINGTIYAS , Hiroshima University , Japan
Funck CAROLIN, Hiroshima University , Japan
The wreck diving tourism at USAT Liberty in Tulamben Bali has been developing for more than 30 years. As suggested by several studies, it can be seen as one of the best practices for the preservation of Underwater Cultural Heritage (UCH) based on local community. While the past researches mostly discussed the topic from either archaeological or tourism viewpoint, the results tend to only focused only on the heritage or the tourism aspects. To get a more comprehensive discussion ad better understanding on the management of wreck diving in Tulamben, this research use both of archaeological and tourism approaches and the framework of scuba diving tourism system with qualitative and quantitative methods. Data collection was done by doing field observation, interview, and questionnaire survey in 2019 and 2020. After evaluating the management of wreck diving in Tulamben based on the principles of sustainable tourism study, we found that it has been going quite well. This can be seen from the awareness of indingenous community with their application of customary law, formal regulation, and funding from several parties especially local government. However, numbers of issues still can be found from the increasing damaged on the shipwreck due to the lack of carriying capacity for divers, conflicts of interest between host community and the local authority, and community’s high-dependency on tourism industry. This study also explained the characteristic of scuba divers, their expectation, satisfaction, and experience. Moreover, we also covered the profiles and roles of Scuba Diving Tourism Industry (SDTI) on the improvement of sustainable diving tourism. In the last part, this study provided several recommendations for the development of sustainable wreck diving tourism in Tulamben from ecological, socio-economic, political, and cultural aspects.
Keywords: Wreck diving|Sustainable Tourism |Underwater cultural Heritage |Bali|Marine Tourism
A104109SK