This paper assesses the responses of community-based tourism (CBT) and local governments to natural disasters. The tourism community in rural areas that are at high risk of natural disasters is largely overlooked in the literature on tourism and disaster management. It can be argued that CBT management is vulnerable to such natural disasters and, therefore, its presence should be considered in the recovery process. Time series observations and in-depth interviews were performed in Pentingsari village on the slopes of Mount Merapi, a stratovolcano in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The findings show that the local government’s preparation plans were focused only on disaster management, in general, and that it had only reactive programmes for tourism recovery. Moreover, CBT was able to respond and recover from the disaster by transforming the tourism destination with support from external agencies. In other words, it is concluded that transformation of the destination, organization, and human and community factors have taken place in the community-based tourism that leads to the post-disaster resilience.

When a disaster destroys historical buildings, it is a challenge to maintain the authenticity and originality of the buildings as a heritage tourism site, and their destruction impacts the local community, whose economy is dependent on this heritage. This paper discusses the reinventing of heritage tourism, using the case of Kotagede, Yogyakarta, which was hit by a 5.5 magnitude earthquake in 2006. The paper shows that the earthquake has refreshed the cultural landscape, and that new tourism packages using the story of heritage in combination with the earthquake event have also led to new economic opportunities. We show that the process of reinventing the post-disaster heritage tourism was however challenged by the problems of administrative versus cultural boundaries, confusing criteria concerning heritage products, conflicts in the building restoration process, a lack of interest among younger generations in culture and tradition, and unsustainable government programmes. Based on this, it can be concluded that the overlapping of the post-disaster recovery process with the reinvention of heritage tourism products may permanently change the authenticity of the cultural landscape and lead to a shift from organic place-making to planned placemaking processes.

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami not only impacted the environment, politics and society, but also changed the performance of tourism as an economic sector in Aceh, Indonesia. This article explores bo...

Tourism has emerged as one of the largest and most rapidly growing economic sectors in the world. Nevertheless, many tourist destinations have been periodically confronted by natural disasters that threaten their survival as an industry by negatively impacting their image and safety perception. This research assessed tourists’ perception of the risk and images of a destination that is considered prone to natural disasters, by surveying 537 tourists in Yogyakarta and Bali. This study contributes to the debate on tourism development issues related to negative perceptions and images that have discouraged prospective tourists from visiting affected destinations. The results of the survey indicated that the occurrence of past disasters did not strongly influence tourists’ decision to visit Indonesia. Instead, the creation of the destination image was informed more by its current situation, and it is these current factors that may encourage or discourage potential tourists. These findings should signal to tourism planners that while environmental disasters are unavoidable, post-disaster rehabilitation of a destination’s image would significantly increase its chances of rebounding quickly.