Some people say that tourism has many negative effects on the countries that people travel to. How true is the statement? what can tourists do to reduce the harmful effects of tourism on local cultures and environments?

First time when people were discovered a potential area as tourism place which has had nature environment and ecosystem such as Raja Ampat Island and Bali Island, discoverer has explored the place for persuading tourists. However, if the area does not have good maintenance, so day-by-day the environment will be damaged and no one wants to respond a problem for managing environment and ecosystem.

Bali is popular holiday destination which has many tourism places such as beach, zoo and monument. Long time ago, Bali was a beautiful city as part of Indonesia, Bali has a strong local culture such as local language, ceremony and art. Balinese, for example, play an important role to establish Bali as the comfort place for traveling, dancing and painting are the real contribution of inhabitants to influence tourists a visiting in Bali.

Many foreign tourists have come to Bali which is becoming noisier and busier, and many investors come to Bali and invest a lot of money to buy some tourism areas, because of that there are building more hotel, cottage and cafe. As a result, the nature environment loses nowadays, because long time ago Bali was green area which was many trees there. Foreign visitor influence local way of live of original culture in Bali with modern lifestyle, as a result, western lifestyle becomes new identity of Balinese which means that Bali’s culture time-by-time disappear. However, Bali provides a high income for Indonesia by tourism sector.

Raja Ampat is outlying island which is in Papua. Inhabitants in Papua have awareness to keep their area still nature. They never fishing use of dynamite which is a tool to catch fish, but it damage a water environment and ecosystem. Actually, local inhabitants can control the tourist who comes to Raja Ampat, when natives give a good example in daily activity, so it will influence tourist to follow local people to keep environment. Local societies also have to introduce their culture to tourists, so that, tourist understand what should visitor do to keep natural tourism area.

In conclusion, tourism sector give advantages and disadvantages, the advantages is tourism sector gives income for county. However, more popular tourism place means that the area is changing to become worse environment. In my view, not only governments should responsible to control tourism area, but also local populations play an important role to keep environment.