THE VISITORS' TOURISM COMMUNICATION EXPERIENCES

Abstract

Tourism is one of the fastest growing industries. The development of tourism provides enormous benefits for the region. However,sometimes it faces big challenges and obstacles and results in a decrease in the number of tourist visits in some areas. This research, entitled the visitors’ tourism communication experiences, aims to describe the communication experiences of tourists during tourist visits and analyze the meaning of the tourism communication. This research was analyzed using the concept of tourism communication, tourists, and tourist destinations. The researcher uses qualitative research methods with a phenomenological approach. The data collection technique was done by interview and observation. The results showed that there were various communication experiences of tourists during their visits to tourist destinations in the form of positive and negative experiences. The positive experiences include enjoying the natural beauty and cultural diversity, while the negative experiences was the unmaintained environmental cleanliness, the number of visitors and people littering and the behavior of people and traders who are not friendly in serving tourists, hawkers who force tourists to buy their wares, as well as the lack of public awareness in maintaining cultural sites in those places.