Heaptalk, Jakarta – East Kutai Government, through the regional Tourism Department, makes a breakthrough to improve the regency’s tourism potential, one of which is by organizing a branding and packaging design training to generate a professional, creative, and reliable tourism actor in the regency.
The program was followed by 75 participants from diverse tourism actors, spanning the representative of the tourism awareness group (Pokdarwis), the Brand Executive Board (DPC) of the Indonesian Tourist Guide Association (HPI) in the East Kutai, the tourism awareness society (MASATA), and also local Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs). This agenda was held for two days, from October 9th-10th, 2022.
As the effort to succeed the agenda, the local tourism department invited two sophisticated speakers, including the lecturer who specialized in product design, Royke Vincentius, and the lecturer who specialized in the tourism sector, M. Fauzan Noor. This activity aims to increase people’s awareness of the importance of packaging and branding to emerge their business potential while promoting local tourism.
Royke revealed numerous benefits obtained from the packaging process. The step will protect the product during shipment and will make the producers easy to promote their product.
“The goal of this process (packaging) is to increase consumers’ awareness of the brand and protect the producers against counterfeiting,” added Royke in his presentation.
Meanwhile, Fauzan delivered the strategy to build branding of the local destination, namely by finding and bringing out the uniqueness of the regency’s potency, which should be adjusted to market demand.
“Therefore, we should find our uniqueness and offer tourism packages at affordable prices. Another important detail is the quality of our tourism. If the consumers are satisfied with our service, they will recommend us to others,” added Fauzan.
On day two, the Chairman of DPC HPI East Kutai, Askar Muzzakkar shared his knowledge about techniques to guide tourists. Muzzakkar affirmed that a guide should have great storytelling skills to deliver information about a tourist destination.
In the last session, the Head of the local tourism department, Nurullah, stated that the Government had prepared strategies to promote the sector, such as mapping tourist destinations in the area, driving the promotion, and enhancing the tourist actor capability.
“East Kutai has 174 tourist destinations. However, we only select several tourist destinations as our main focus, the selected place will be developed, while the rest are still on our planning list,” said Nurullah.
“The goal of this tourism sector development is to bring contribution to the national economy by stimulating it while creating a comfortable environment. A tourist destination is demanded by people to refresh their minds after working. Investment and promotion should be included in this program. The investment department in East Kutai will provide easy access to investors that want to develop destination sites in the regency, this investment also can enhance facilities in East Kutai’s tourist destination,” stated Nurullah in his closing statement. *
