STAKEHOLDERS' PARTNERSHIP IN AGRIMARINE-BASED TOURISM DEVELOPMENT IN INDONESIA: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

Agrimarine-Based Tourism (ABT) serves as an advantage and opportunity for developing tourism in the archipelagic countries like Indonesia. The agrimarine-based tourism in Indonesia is hugely rich in potential thanks to thousands of small islands with amazing tourist attractions, which are supported by the agricultural and marine products as the supporting resources for tourism development. To make the best use of the huge potential, the stakeholders' partnership plays an important role by integrating their influences and interests into a specific goal. Unfortunately, such a strategic role is rarely well implemented in various tourist destinations. Based on a two months field research in Eastern Indonesia, this paper explains the factors influencing the weakness of ABT stakeholders' partnership, which, among others, are the inability to define the their own strategic role and function, no firm and consistent policy direction, low commitment to common goals, misperception about the targeted ABT development, and no regulation which brings a common interest in ABT development. The study pointed out that the stakeholders have been aware of these factors as the weak points for accelerating ABT development. Further, the linkage of ABT stakeholdersâ?™ role and function was explored as the basis for preparing the program of each stakeholder and the promotional regulation for ABT development. Keywords: stakeholders, partnership, agrimarine, tourism, Indonesia