Local's Perspective of Community Participation in Lake Toba as a Tourism Destination

Abstract

Tourism has become an important issue since the last few decades, especially in the development
of the national economy. in fact the benefits of tourism have not been equally accepted by local
communities, which is largely due to low involvement in tourism development. This research begins by
identifying tourism potential in Lake Toba through the attribute theory of tourist destinations (attraction,
accessibility, amenities, accommodation and ancillary service). In addition, this study aims to examine the
forms of involvement of local communities in Lake Toba and analyze their level of participation. Multimethod approachs are used to examine this phenomenon. Qualitative method is conducted by nonparticipant observation in research locations to see the locals’ behavior in Lake Toba in term of tourism
activities acceptance. The quantitative method is conducted by spreading questionnaires with 90 randomly
chosen respondents (local communities) regarding their perspective towards their participation in tourism
development. The collected data will be processed and combined, also studied using Arnstein’s model as the
main measuring instrument in discussing the level of local community participation in destination’s
attributes in Lake Toba. The result of this research is Lake Toba has the potential to attribute tourist
destinations on 5A's. In terms of local community participation level, the community response to its
involvement in tourism destination attributes in Lake Toba can be categorized in the "partnership" phase.