As the sun sets over the Celebes Sea and its orange glow paints the horizon golden, a few dozen tourists stand at the pier of Budo, a seaside village of 2,400 people 25 kilometers northeast of the regional capital, Manado.
They take photos and marvel at the view; A woman visiting from a nearby town exclaims that even for the locals, the sunset on the volcanoes is an extraordinary sight.
Until a few years ago, the 1,000-foot-long pier that cuts through a mangrove forest and connects the village to the open sea was dilapidated and used only by fishermen who wanted to go out to sea.
But those were different times, explains Hani Lorens Singa, President of the Village Enterprise Association (BUMDES): Back then there were a lot more fish and no tourists.
Like many coastal villages in North Sulawesi in Indonesia’s far northeast, Budo has traditionally depended on small-scale fishing, but fish stocks have dwindled, prompting a renewed focus on tourism as a livelihood opportunity.
A program of the International Labor Organization (ILOa UN agency), supports the rural community of Budo and four other villages to diversify towards sustainable tourism and provides skills to local entrepreneurs, mainly women.
The pier has been renovated and painted with government support, and benches and wooden huts have been added for tourists, who pay an entrance fee of 10,000 rupiah (US$0.65) to walk along and enjoy the view.
Visitors can purchase local delicacies and drinks from the ticket office, and orders are prepared and delivered to the pier by available village club members. “We share the work, we share the income – this is tourism on a human scale”says Mr. Lorens Singa.
Since the renovation, a fifth of visitors have spent more and ordered local delicacies and drinks at the cash register, and a few visitors have also stayed overnight.
Thanks to the support of the ILO and its partners, Budo has quintupled its tourism revenue and now appears on the tourist trail: the village was the winner in the digital marketing category in the Top 50 Village Tourism Award of the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Industries this year.
Despite the improvements, much remains to be done and Mr. Lorens Singa is not content. “We need to give people more reasons to stay to eat or stay overnight,” he says.
The Indonesian government supplied wooden buildings on or near the houses of the villagers in Marinsow
Homestays, hashtags and home cooking
About an hour’s drive east of Budo, residents of Marinsow have taken a crash course in the bed and breakfast business, a steep learning curve for many.
“Many of the entrepreneurs we work with have never been tourists themselves, so without training it’s not obvious to them what tourists expect,” says Mary Kent, the ILO’s Chief Technical Adviser on the project.
Marinsow is located in a mining region several kilometers from Indonesia’s pristine beaches, so tourists have had no reason to stop by until now. But since Marinsov was designated a “priority tourist destination” by the government, the village has received a significant financial boost aimed at diversifying the economy.
More than 50 villagers were given small wooden bungalows on their properties to start bed and breakfast businesses, or homestays as they are called in Indonesia. The ILO, together with local partners Klabat University and Manado State Polytechnic, is helping to equip local people with the skills they need to be successful entrepreneurs, such as accounting, costing and marketing, hospitality and tourism.
“I was very surprised to learn that tourists prefer their white sheets and variety of dishes,” says Yeni Alelo. Ms. Alelo and the other participants also learned the importance of using hashtags in social media marketing posts so that tourists looking for accommodation in the area can find it more easily.
“The women’s small businesses are financed by microfinance loans and were able to make all payments on time,” says Gabriel Tamasengge, mayor of the village. “We’re very proud of our women, of the business acumen we never knew they had.”
The investments in marketing and quality control in these communities are paying off, as about half of the few hundred tourists who stayed in Marinsow last year were from outside the province, including an increasing number from abroad.
Back in Budo, there is interest in building more homestays and increasing overnight stays, perhaps through a marketing campaign to persuade foreign tourists from nearby world-class diving destinations at Bunaken Marine Park to stop by for dinner and pay a visit in typical village rather than sticking to the usual mass tourism destinations. The Village Enterprise Association also plans to offer cooking and craft classes and fishing trips.
“Our job now is to ensure that when the ILO and government funding ends, we have a fully formed company that will enable us to stand completely on our own two feet,” says Mr Lorens Singa . “We had the vision and we have the commitment – I’m confident we will succeed.”
