Economic Value And Potential Development Of The District Salahutu Twal Pombo Island Central Maluku

Abstract

The region of the small islands has a high potential both in the natural resources and the environmental services . In the natural resources, this area provides the productive natural resources such as coral reefs , seagrass beds ( seagrass ) , mangrove forests , fisheries and conservation areas . In the environmental services, the small islands provide the beauty of nature that encourages the development of marine tourism industries. On the other hand , the utilization of the potential of the small islands is still not optimal due to the concern and government policy are still oriented to the land ( Bappenas 2012) . TWAL Pombo Island is a nature conservation area. It is used for tourism and outdoor recreation beacause it has a nature beauty and the location is reached easly from the capital city. But, there is still a limited data that shows the potential of Pombo Island. So, there is no maintenance and management to govern this island .. Under these conditions, this study has 3 purposes, there are ( 1 ) to identify of the potential of the Pombo Island as tourism area, it is based on traveler perception , ( 2 ) to estimate of the economic value that can be generated from the tourist island of Pombo , ( 3 ) to analyze a strategy development policy for the Pombo island as tourism area . Descriptive qualtitative method of I the perception of the travelers who are interested in Pombo Island is used to answer the first goal.. calculate the economic value of Pombo Island from the tourist demand side approach by using Travel Cost Method ( TCM ) is used to answer the second goal. . The third objective is done by Identifythe strengths , opportunities , weaknesses and threats that are based on internal and external factors Pombo Island management using SWOT analysis is used to answer the third goal. . The results show that the Marine Park Nature Pombo Island has the potential to be developed . Based on, the perception of the travelers , the Pombo Island has a high tourism potential with the natural attractions and the tourists expressed very satisfaction with the beauty, and the access road is very adequate and circumstances so easy to achieve . But there is still not supporting facilities, so many travelers advice to build the more facilities for supporting the development of tourism in Pombo Island. . An aggregate value of economic benefits or the sum of WTP can be obtained by multiplying the decree which has been obtained by total visits for the year. So the value of benefits obtained Pombo Island is Rp 33,709,084,750 . visits per year . This value indicates the value or price of ecosystems perceived by visitors . Meanwhile, the results of the SWOT analysis, show that it needs to increase the strengths of the Pombo Island to develop and to attract more visitors/tourists.