tourism in a balinese village

American Geographical Society

Tourism in a Balinese VillageAuthor(s): Antonia HusseySource: Geographical Review, Vol. 79, No. 3 (Jul., 1989), pp. 311-325Published by: American Geographical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/215575 .

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TOURISM IN A BALINESE VILLAGE* ANTONIA HUSSEY

ABSTRACT. Between 1970 and 1984, Kuta, Indonesia, changed from an insignificant farming village to an important tourism site that accommodated more than 60,000 arrivals annually. Development of tourism resulted from local entrepreneurial activity without governmental or external aid or financing. Tourism led to spectacular increases in land values, personal income, employment, and infrastructure and facilities. It also brought high levels of crime, environmental degradation, and alteration of the original village character.

KUTA, on the Indonesian island of Bali, was a small, traditional agricultural and fishing village in 1970. By 1984 the village had been trans- formed into one of the most important tourism centers on the island.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the effects of tourism on the geographic, cultural, economic, social, and political conditions in Kuta. The hope is that this investigation will enable greater understanding of the role of tourism in developmental processes at the local scale. Furthermore, the study identifies opportunities and pitfalls that should be considered in any for- mulation of plans for tourism development.'

PRETOURISM LANDSCAPE

Kuta, located nine kilometers south of Denpasar and two kilometers north of the international airport, is situated adjacent to the Indian Ocean on the narrow isthmus separating the arid Bukit peninsula from the rest of Bali (Fig. 1). The village covers 12.93 square kilometers and encompasses two traditional villages, Legian and Seminyak, that local people treat as separate places but that are administratively part of Kuta. The whole area is subdivided into twelve traditional neighborhoods (banjar) that are territorial, social, and cultural units. The word banjar refers to both a place and its residents, who act as a collective group. Unlike most Balinese villages, which are located in the mountains, Kuta stands on flat terrain. The arid climate rules out the lush vegetation found elsewhere on the island.

Before the onset of tourism development, Kuta had a population of 9,000. The cultural landscape of the village shared features common to most Balinese villages. The core of the village was at its center, in the area defined by the

* Funding for fieldwork in 1984-85 was provided by grants from the National Geographic Society and the National Science Foundation. The research was sponsored by the Indonesian Department of Postal Services, Telecommunications, and Tourism. I Unless otherwise indicated, data and information referred to in this article were obtained from unpublished governmental and village records and by interviews with village residents conducted during 1974-75, 1977, 1980, and 1984-85.

* DR. HUSSEY is an assistant professor of geography at California State University, North- ridge, California 91330.



312 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

BALI

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crossroads of two main streets, Jalan Pantai and Legian-Buni Sari (Fig. 2). A banyan tree housing a shrine grew in the middle of the crossroads. In the premotorized-traffic era, the area around and under the banyan tree was the site of a periodic market and was used as a backdrop for dramas and dances.2 Additionally this area contained the village temple, which is the most important public place in the village. To the east of the center were the per- manent covered market that served the entire district as well as various governmental and local administrative offices. Surrounding the main intersection were most of the meetinghouses for the village, which were significant social, political, and religious foci for their respective neighborhoods. Lying south of the residential zone were the death temple and graveyards. To the north were Legian and Seminyak, rural areas with no important public structures except the neighborhood meetinghouses.

Throughout Bali, the typical dwelling is a compound, sheltering a family or more likely an extended family, on an enclosed square or oblong plot of land. The compound is surrounded by a wall or fence four to five feet high with a single, gated entrance composed of two pillars supporting a roof that faces a street or alley. Inside a compound, pavilions are placed around a yard of hardened earth, and most of them contain areas for rice threshing, pig raising, and gardening. In Kuta the main residential zone consisted of a solid core of family compounds surrounding the principal intersection and ex- tending to the alleys that connected the two east-west roads. In 1970 this

2 Miguel Covarrubias, Island of Bali (New York: Knopf, 1937), 41-44.



TOURISM IN BALINESE VILLAGE 313

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zone was exclusively residential; the walls enclosing each compound abutted one another to form a continuous barrier along the main roads. Furthermore, the road-facing walls painted rose, blue, or white and the elaborately carved gates added to a distinctive character for Kuta as a village. Surrounding the core were other compounds located along streets in front of fields; additional compounds were scattered along the dirt paths that crisscross the many open fields in and around Kuta. A dominant feature of the landscape, these fields with dry, scrubby undergrowth, dotted with palm trees, were used for dry farming.

In 1970 most residents of Kuta derived their income from farming and fishing. Agriculture consisted of dry-crop farming, mainly of coconuts, groundnuts, soybeans, and cassava; cattle grazing on the surrounding fields; and pig raising in family compounds. The land in Kuta was unirrigated and productivity was low; furthermore, income from fishing was sporadic until the establishment of a fish-processing plant in a neighboring village and the introduction of outboard motors in 1976. Hence the majority of villagers were poor; in 1968 per capita income was approximately $40 to $70 a year.

In addition to those activities, Kuta contained four small shops that sold sundries, and each of the twelve neighborhoods had its own coffee and eating stall. Several families also sold food, coffee, and sweets from carts along the main streets or near the fishing huts at the southern end of the beach. The village contained no restaurant, but two small hotels were located on the outskirts.

Pretourism Kuta was an ordinary farming-fishing village of little economic or cultural importance on Bali. It did possess one unique potential resource-the beach (Fig. 3). Balinese held beachfront property, the shoreline, and the sea in low esteem. Beach land not only was agriculturally unpro- ductive but also was considered spiritually impure.3 However, to foreigners the wide, sandy beach at Kuta had the attraction of beauty and excellent surfing and bathing.

TOURISM AND KUTA

Interestingly the development of tourism at Kuta occurred largely in a spontaneous fashion outside governmental plans. Since 1969 tourism has been an important component in all Indonesian developmental plans, and by 1979 the activity was the fifth-largest earner of foreign exchange for the country. Although foreign exchange is the most important reason for en- couraging tourism, the central government also views this activity as a means to develop regions with few resources or little growth potential.4

Governmental promotion of tourism as a means of economic advance- ment on Bali dates from 1969, when the first five-year plan provided Rp

3Covarrubias, footnote 2 above, 10. 4Repelita II, Republik Indonesia, 11 (1974-75-1978-79): 381-393.




FIG. 3Kuta beach (Photograph by author)

7,069 million to upgrade the airport at Tuban for modern jet traffic and to rehabilitate and widen the road system connecting the airport to Denpasar and Sanur.5 Assisted by funds from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Indonesian government hired a consulting firm to prepare a master plan for tourism on Bali. Adopting a top-down orientation, the plan advocated catering to tour groups from Australia, western Europe, North America, and Japan by providing international-standard hotels and a generally improved infrastructure. Two sites were selected for development: Sanur, located on the southeastern coast six kilometers from Denpasar, and Nusa Dua on the Bukit peninsula.6 At the time the plans were formulated, Kuta was not selected as a promising site for major development in spite of its accessibility and good beach.

The proximity of Bali to Australia proved to be advantageous for Indo- nesian tourism and inadvertently for Kuta. Because flights are relatively inexpensive and short-Sydney is only five hours away-Australia has become the primary tourist-originating country for Bali. Australian tourists can visit Bali for less than they can a comparable Australian resort. The airfare

5Gerard Francillion, Bali-Tourism, Culture, Environment, Report SHCO-75/WS/17, Udayana Uni- versity, Bali, 1974, 23. 6 Ramond Noronha, Paradise Revisited: Tourism in Bali, in Tourism: Passport to Development? (edited by Emanuel de Kadt; New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 177-204.




is only slightly higher than the cost for a similar distance within Australia, and budget prices on Bali more than compensate for the fare differential.

A beachfront location offering easy ocean access, proximity to an international airport, a relatively close pool of tourists, and economical airfares were all factors that combined to favor Kuta. However, these factors were not sufficient to generate a tourism industry; what was needed was an entrepreneurial response from the residents of the area. Local residents at Kuta neither were aware of the tourism potential nor sought to promote it. Trav- elers came to Kuta to exploit the recreational possibilities of the beach, and the villagers simply responded to the new opportunities by providing them with basic necessities. Initially only a modest amount of business acumen was needed to become a tourism entrepreneur because the predominantly young, budget-oriented travelers were willing to accept, with minor modi- fications, local standards in food and lodging. Thus the demand for facilities generated by the tourists could be satisfied by liquidating traditional resources-land, gold, agrarian products and animals, and goods-and by securing loans from family members. Such a response is typical in agrarian societies, where individuals are dependent on their ability to manipulate resources in times of scarcity and abundance to assure a livelihood.7 Village entrepreneurs in Kuta were willing to reallocate their assets because tourism represented the best immediate opportunity to increase their incomes.

ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITY 1970-1976

The early years of tourism development in Kuta saw increasing numbers of tourist arrivals matched by dramatic expansion of facilities as local entrepreneurs responded overwhelmingly to the new opportunities. Only 6,095 visitors stayed at Kuta in 1972, the first year for which data were recorded. The next year the figure had risen to 14,522, and it was 18,010 for 1974, but then dropped to 14,852 in 1976. Before 1970 there were two hotels, one privately owned, the other government owned; by 1975 the area contained more than one hundred locally owned accommodations and twenty-seven restaurants.

The preferred investment among village-based entrepreneurs was a losmen, one-story lodging with rooms constructed in a row. Investing in a losmen, a nontraditional economic activity, was relatively risk free, because the demand for rooms was high and investment costs were low. For example, the owner of a losmen business who made an initial investment of $800 to $1,200 could expect to receive a profit within a year or, at a maximum, a year and a half, even with an occupancy rate of only 40 percent. Occupancy rates typically were well above this level: in 1974 in the core area of Kuta

7 Sutti Ortiz, Forecasts, Decisions, and the Farmer's Response to Uncertain Environments, in Agri- cultural Decision Making (edited by Peggy F. Bartlett; New York: Academic Press, 1980), 177-200; Alice G. Dewey, Peasant Marketing in Java (New York: Free Press, 1962), 17-22.




they averaged 70 to 80 percent, while in the Legian area of the village, rates were approximately 60 to 70 percent. This activity stimulated a building boom in Kuta. Not only were new businesses being opened, but also established entrepreneurs were reinvesting their profits in expansion of existent facilities as well as opening new tourism businesses. By 1974, owning land in the core area of Kuta was no longer important, because the growing demand for rooms resulted in the spread of losmen businesses to peripheral zones of the village (Fig. 4). Businesses were being established along the main streets in the Legian section and at sites between Jalan Padma and Jalan Dayan Poppies.

Local residents also invested in restaurants, but those enterprises never became as popular as losmen. In 1975, twenty-seven restaurants operated in Kuta, eighteen of which were Balinese owned-ten by local villagers and eight by Balinese from elsewhere on the island. Unlike losmen, restaurants generally required streetfront sites. Thus local entrepreneurs, if faced with the additional cost of securing such a location, preferred to invest in a losmen. For the inexperienced entrepreneur, restaurants also were more difficult to run than losmen, because the business required at least some skill in food services and management and constant attention by the owner. Furthermore, in the early 1970s, food storage capacity was limited by the lack of electricity, which meant that owners had to shop daily.

TOURISM 1977-1984

Tourism development in Kuta resulted in increasing land prices and land revaluation, which in turn led to a class of land-rich smallholders. Rice land, long the most highly valued property, soon fell into obscurity as land prices in other parts of the village soared. Between 1970 and 1984, the price of one are (one hundred square meters) of prime land in the core area of Kuta increased from $17 to $8,000, in the Legian section from $12 to $7,000, and for beachfront property from $12 to $10,000. In contrast, the price of an are of rice land increased from $150 to only $400. Residents now appraised land for its commercial, not agricultural, potential and began converting streetfront properties to commercial use, mainly as art shops selling clothing and textiles. These shops were developed in the late 1970s by established entrepreneurs who were seeking a new way to utilize their profits or by streetfront property owners who were either unable or unwilling to invest in losmen or restaurants. Moreover, the shops provided an excellent means to utilize space along a street that was too small for an accommodation or restaurant. Owning a shop was advantageous because construction was inexpensive, approximately $200 a shop in the late 1970s, and rent from a series of shops could provide an income. However, by 1980 these shops had obliterated the village atmosphere by hiding family compounds and con- cealing any visual evidence of noncommercial activity.

Entrepreneurial activity in Kuta was not confined solely to local villagers.




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Nonlocal Balinese participated in resort enterprises. Kuta offered entrepreneurs from other regions an opportunity to initiate a tourism business in a fast-growing resort where investment costs, compared with those of other resorts on the island, were low. Entrepreneurs with little business acumen could start in Kuta and, like local villagers, learn from practical experience.8 In the early years of tourism development, approximately 17 percent of the investment in accommodations came from nonlocal Balinese. Between 1977 and 1980, nonlocals supplied more than 40 percent of new investments, mainly in the Legian section. Furthermore, most of the food stalls that opened to supply shop operators were run by women from neighboring villages and, to a lesser extent, by migrants from Java and Madura.

Opportunities in Kuta also attracted business people from Java and even foreigners, who mainly invested in bars and restaurants. They were an ideal investment for foreigners, because they required less space than other activities like losmen; infrastructural development was easy; and they provided the most convenient way to circumvent Indonesian law prohibiting sale of land to foreigners. By 1983 approximately 44 percent of the bars and restaurants in Kuta were foreign owned.

By 1977 the composition of the labor force in Kuta began to change. As local villagers left employment to open their own businesses, migrants filled the vacancies. Thus the demography of the village was altered, especially throughout the later half of the 1970s. By 1982 the alteration was substantial. Kuta became the destination for migrants from other Indonesian regions. The migrants included hotel workers, business people, transient peddlers, job seekers, and "adventurers." Migrants at Kuta usually rented a room in a family compound or in a losmen built especially for rental or converted from tourism use to migrant-rental occupancy. The migrant labor force at Kuta thus gave a new business opportunity for local residents-room renting. Some families simply rented a spare room or two, but others constructed losmen solely for migrant rental.

The beachfront and the Legian section were two areas of Kuta where expansion of tourism facilities was significant after 1980. Unlike many other resorts where hotel construction occurred almost exclusively along the beach, development of the oceanfront zone proceeded slowly at Kuta. Facilities were initially located in the village and inside family compounds rather than along the beach. This preference reflected both the involvement of local villagers and their low social and economic esteem for oceanfront property. However, by 1984 hotel development was almost continuous from Jalan Diana Pura to Gang Dayan Poppies (Fig. 5). Development did not create a dense appearance because hotels were set back from the beach and were predominantly bungalow style. Additionally, existent vegetation was re-

8 Donald W. McTaggart, Tourism and Tradition in Bali, World Development 8 (1980): 457-466.




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tained, and new plantings by hotel gardeners disguised to some extent the string of hotels along the coast.

By 1980, the main areas of Kuta, from Gang Dayan Poppies southward to Jalan Raya, had been developed. Hence the primary zone of subsequent development shifted to the Legian section because of greater availability of land and its lower price. Between 1980 and 1984, approximately 83 percent




of all new losmen, hotels, restaurants, and bars were located in Legian. The main street, Jalan Legian, underwent a dramatic transformation. Formerly the scenery consisted of fields and palms, and the roadside was bordered by a dense profusion of flowering shrubs. By 1984 this landscape had been replaced by a continuous series of roadside businesses that extended into Krobokan, a rice-farming village adjoining Legian.

Development at Legian benefited local residents, who at last were able to enjoy the full measure of the tourism boom. Owners of street-front property especially benefited from the spread of tourism as shops filled the space between restaurants, bars, losmen, and hotels. However, this development generated considerable traffic, which has proved detrimental to some of Kuta's residents. By 1984, the main intersection at Jalan Legian and Jalan Pantai had become the traffic hub of Kuta. As with some of the cross streets in Denpasar, traffic density became so heavy that police officers were needed to keep order. The noise from motorcycles, automobiles, delivery trucks, buses, and vans forced nineteen of the twenty-three losmen owners to con- vert to migrant-room rentals, because tourists would no longer stay in the area. Furthermore, the noise and the congestion severely impinge on the abilities of the villagers to make offerings at the shrine located there.

ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECT OF TOURISM

The pressure of tourism development spoiled the beach at Kuta. Because of the ecological and social conditions wrought by tourism, a once beautiful beach became polluted, unpleasant, and diminished. The coral bed at the southern end of the beach was an early casualty. Coral, which was sold to lime kilns to be used for runway construction at the airport and for the new road system to the resort at Nusa Dua, began to be mined in 1968, and its destruction continued through the mid-1970s. Besides losing a valuable nat- ural resource, removal of the bed resulted in severe beach erosion and, during high seas, loss of beachfront property (Fig. 6). The entire length of the beach has been affected, with erosion now claiming approximately two centimeters a year.9

Trash is another problem along the beach, where almost all of the plastic bags used by peddlers to package fruit, food, and assorted trinkets accu- mulated (Fig. 7). The most startling feature of the beach was the density of plastic straws, which after a decade significantly detracted from the aesthetic quality of the beach. At low tide, the wet sand is now a slick morass of trash, and plastic bags and straws bob on the surface of the murky waters. The village authorities are aware of the trash problem and pay a clean-up crew to rake the sand and bury the debris every morning. Nevertheless, the effort is futile, because most of the trash buried each morning reappears after the next high tide and throughout the day a new layer of trash accumulates.

I Pantai Kuta Mundur Dua Centimeter Pentahun, Bali Post, 9 July 1983.




A40

FIG. 6-Beach erosion. (Photograph by author)

SOCIAL EFFECT OF ToURISM

Developments in Kuta have brought many changes. Firstly, the input of tourism money has allowed some individuals to become quite wealthy. One individual who owned a fourteen-room losmen made a profit of approximately $10,000 in 1977 and by 1984 was clearing $75,000 a year; another person who owned forty-one rooms realized a 1984 profit of $157,000. Profits of this magnitude were typical of the more aggressive entrepreneurs in Kuta, who bought considerable plots of land on Bali and who now themselves take international vacations. The prosperity has attracted migrants who form a stable population employed either in the formal or informal sector of the economy. However, some persons came to Kuta to engage in illegal activities associated with resorts-thievery, prostitution,, and drug dealing.

Crime had been a problem for many years, although violent crime was unknown until 1979. The victims were usually tourists, but by the latter half of the 1970s crime was affecting local residents. Robbery, which previously had been confined to losmen and hotels, was occurring in family compounds. Moreover, walking in the evening became uncomfortable for both tourists and local residents as certain streets were lined with prostitutes and drug dealers. Traditionally on Bali the banjar had been responsible for maintaining the peace in its territory, and in most villages policing by the banjar had been unnecessary. The conditions at Kuta differ. The banjar was requested to surrender its traditional authority over the neighborhood and to rely on




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provincial police to maintain order. Tourism development thus resulted in removal of an important traditional function from the banjar. This in turn has led to increased tension between villagers and the provincial police force that periodically erupts in accusations of corruption.

By 1980 Kuta accommodated more than 60,000 tourists, and the composition by nationality had become seasonal. As a result the names for the season used by villagers switched from the traditional wet, dry, cool, or hot to ones that identified the main tourist groups. December through February became known as musim Jepan (Japanese season); March as musim perempuan Jepan (Japanese women season); April through June as musim Australi (Aus- tralian season); July and August as musim Perancis (French season); and September through November as musim bermacam-macam (variety season). Furthermore, business owners in Kuta acquired a vocabulary of English, French, and Japanese words and phrases that are applied as warranted. Restaurant owners change their sign boards and menus according to the season: winter-month displays are in Japanese, but English dominates in spring, to be replaced by French in summer.

FROM VILLAGE TO TOWN

Change in the landscape of Kuta to accommodate tourism enterprises has been an ongoing process for several decades, but since 1980 Kuta has had a new character. Between 1979 and 1980, tourist arrivals to Kuta increased from 36,052 to 60,352, a 67 percent rise. By 1980, 33 percent of the tourists visiting Bali stayed at the village. Thus Kuta was firmly established as a tourist resort.

The governmental authorities on Bali recognized the importance of Kuta to the island's economy. In 1980 they officially recognized Kuta as a priority tourism area and changed its status from village to town. As a priority tourism area, Kuta would receive closer scrutiny from the regional and national governments and would be the recipient of government-inspired developmental schemes. With town status, residents paid higher land taxes, but Kuta became eligible to receive certain types of governmental assistance like street paving.

Before 1980, Kuta had only four paved roads. In 1980 the regional government began paving all village streets, including small alleys. Additionally sidewalks were constructed with a drainage system marked by grates at five- foot intervals. Unfortunately the grates fell apart within a year and are a considerable hazard to an unwary passerby, who risks injury from a four- foot plunge into a sewer. Local villagers generally prefer to avoid the sidewalk and use the street. The sidewalks are used by tourists; when pedestrian traffic is heavy, the flow has a strange rhythm as people hop or leap every five feet to cross the broken grates.

Various services and businesses catering to the newer needs of residents began locating in Kuta after 1980. For example, a branch office of the electrical




company opened in 1982 after power lines were installed throughout the village in 1981. Banks providing door-to-door deposit service for the shop operators are now available. Construction, plumbing, and electrical supply stores have opened in Kuta so the need to travel to Denpasar for equipment has been eliminated. Also tourists and residents can take advantage of twenty- four-hour photograph-developing outlets, xerox machines, money changers, a telegraph office, crating and shipping firms, shoe stores, and beauty parlors. Kuta has become an urban center with businesses that provide services not only for the tourist industry but also for residents. The tourists keep coming: by the mid-1980s tourist arrivals averaged more than 64,000 annually, some five times the resident population of Kuta.

CONCLUSIONS

In 1970, Kuta was a sleepy Balinese fishing village of little importance. Fourteen years later, its economy had changed from subsistence based on fishing and dry-crop farming to one based on tourism and other tertiary activities. Kuta had grown into a small urban center with an official population of 14,000 and was one of the chief tourist-destination sites in Bali.

Tourism development at Kuta has had both positive and negative results. On the one hand, numerous individuals have become wealthy, and nontraditional employment is available not only to locals but also to migrants from other parts of Bali and Indonesia. The infrastructure in Kuta has improved, and additional services are available. The government derives increased tax and foreign-exchange revenues, and many tourists enjoy a beach that otherwise would not be accessible to them. On the other hand, a traditional Balinese village is now a crowded, noisy, polluted, crime-ridden town at the mercy of a fickle international tourist market.

The development that emerged at Kuta provides important lessons. Firstly, it shows that individuals in a "backward" village can easily embrace an entrepreneurial spirit and can quickly develop considerable economic activity without external intervention. Secondly, Kuta demonstrates the importance of budget-category travelers and the need for tourism planners to incorporate them into small-scale developmental projects. Thirdly, the conditions at Kuta illustrate the speed with which development can occur, the many problems that can arise, and the dangers of uncontrolled development to the very resources that led to its occurrence in the first place.



tourism in a balinese village

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