ITB students, Si Bolang Team, won the 3rd place in the ECOWEEK 2019 National Case Competition at Sultan Agung Islamic University, 25-27 September 2019, Semarang. The theme of ECOWEEK 2019 National Case Competition was Creative Tourism in Destination Development “Millennials Tourism towards 4.0 Era”. This competition is a tourism management competition which is held once a year by UNISSULA. This year, the competition raised issues faced by the Gondoriyo Village area. In the village, there is a small waterfall being developed as the main tourist attraction. Collaborating with Semarang City Tourism Office and UNISSULA, the villagers hope that their village can be empowered.

The Bolang team consisted of Vania Wijaya, Erlangga, and Nicholas King Herijanto, all of whom were SBM ITB students majoring in Management from batch  2020.

“Our team has a high interest in developing tourism in Indonesia because Indonesia does have a great potential in the field of tourism,” Vania said. “Obviously, with proper management and development, our country can become a country with tourism as a core business, which will certainly catalyze economic growth,” she added.

The Bolang Team proposed the idea by formulating a tourism development program called Gondoriyo Integrated Ecopark uniting what the region has to offer, starting from the potential of Culinary (Food), Local Culture (Culture), and Potential Nature. This program is packaged on the basis of Sustainable Tourism, Creative and experience-centered tourism, and rural tourism. Integrated Gondoriyo Ecopark consists of 5 main programs: Gondoriyo Travel Diary, Gondoriyo Cultural Festival, Gondoriyo Revitalization, Gondoriyo Culinary Festival, and Gondoriyo Agritourism

Thanks to the ideas delivered, Bolang team finally won the 3rd place. “Of course we are grateful to get the 3rd place in ECOWEEK 2019. We are motivated to take part in other competitions“ Erlangga said.

“Actually, the struggle we experienced was not much, because we really like traveling. So, we know the latest tourism trends that are booming in the world of tourism” said Nicholas. “The most challenging thing in our opinion is taking the time to work on this competition, because indeed we are also still busy studying, so we have to manage time,” he added.

Vania said that as management students, the knowledge they got from this competition was Strategic Management and Marketing, especially in applying the theories in in the tourism industry. “Hopefully in the future, we will have another chance to take part in other competitions”,  she said.