The Missing Links in Agritourism: A Lesson from Rural Development Project

Agritourism, which is an integration of agriculture and tourism activities, is often regarded as the main strategy for rural development. The concept itself seems promising in addition to numerous success stories of agritourism implementation in some cities in Indonesia (e.g., Malang City, Bogor City, Yogyakarta City, in Indonesia). However, there is no guarantee that the implementation of agritourism in other cities would yield the same level of success. Despite the difference in agriculture potential, there exist missing links in agritourism development which for many cases turn out to be the reason of failure. These missing links were discovered during the process of Rural Development and Planning Evaluation Project, which was conducted in 4 months, covering rural areas in Kalimantan. In this paper, the missing links in agritourism development are a lesson learned gained from an evaluation project that serves as a basis to draw recommendation on how to restore the link of this missing links. The elaboration is conducted in a qualitative approach, focusing on cases from two rural areas in Kalimantan.