Forest wellness tourism destination branding for supporting disaster mitigation: A case of Batur UNESCO Global Geopark, Bali

Abstract

Indonesia is a beautiful nation prone to natural disasters. The attractiveness of a place is the potential for its people to prosper through tourism, particularly natural tourism. As part of an effort to preserve nature and safeguard the source of human prosperity, it is necessary to implement disaster mitigation strategies, such as preserving forests to prevent landslides. Disaster mitigation includes increasing community participation and awareness of disaster risk management. Likewise,Batur Geopark, Kintamani, Bali, protected forest areas with caldera and lakes can be utilized with good and sustainable management. This research is a potential branding destination for Batur Geopark as a mental recreation area by adopting the theme “forest bathing”. The formulation of forest bathing as a branding strategy is also an effort to maintain a sustainable forest and optimize the participation of the local community. This research is qualitative with case study method. Data was collected from June to August 2021 by means of field study and desk study in implementing destination branding concepts. The results show that there is potential to create destination branding with the theme Geoforest-Bathing. This branding is expected to be applied to forest-wellness attractions which can provide great benefits for visitors, the local community, and as part of landslide disaster mitigation efforts in the geopark area.

Keywords

• disaster-mitigation
• destination branding
• forest bathing
• geopark
• geotourism
• sustainability tourism