The Sustainable Development of Natural Tourism Area Based on Ecological-Humanism: A Case Study of Ngabatata Waterfall, Nagekeo Regency, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia.

Abstract

Ngabatata Waterfall is a natural waterfall with a beautiful environment located in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), Indonesia which has attracted the attention of some local and several foreign tourists. This has made the local government, local leaders, and local youth organizations design and optimizes the waterfall as one of the tourism destinations in NTT. Some problems were, however, observed in the development process and the most urgent ones are related to the topography and difficulty in accessing the area with several tourists travelling for almost 2 hours in very extreme topography conditions to reach the location. Therefore, the local government initiated some development and management strategies to make the trip easier and more comfortable for tourists and this was discovered in the design of a waterfall-based on sustainable development using the ecology-humanity concept by researchers and experts. The study was conducted using qualitative method and this involved obtaining in-depth insights into the location's problems to propose the appropriate planning strategy to develop Ngabatata as one of the favourite tourist destinations in the country. It also focused on understanding the beliefs, experiences, attitudes, behaviours, and interactions of the people and tourists as well as the collection and analysis of non-numerical data such as texts, videos, and audios to understand their real condition, opinions, and proposed design strategy. The findings are expected to be useful in the formulation of some strategic plans and designs for the Ngabatata waterfall.