Analysis of Innovation in Tourism, Business, and Cultural Aspects in Petung Hamlet Tourism Village

Abstract

This study focuses on how innovations emerge to advance the development of a tourism village by the residents of Dusun Petung through their daily activities and village management in the aspects of tourism, business, and culture. Dusun Petung is a hamlet located in Kepuharjo Village, Cangkringan District, Sleman, Yogyakarta. The residents of this hamlet experienced relocation following the 2010 eruption of Mount Merapi. As a result, they were forced to rebuild their lives in permanent housing that is currently located approximately three kilometers south of their former settlement, one of which involved initiating an educational disaster tourism village as a livelihood strategy. This research employs a qualitative method to explain innovations in aspects of tourism, business, and culture. Data was collected from October to December 2025. The first data collection method was observation, which included observations of the spatial layout of the hamlet, locations of residents’ daily activities, and various tourist destinations around the hamlet area. The second method was in-depth interviews with residents, including farmers, livestock breeders, coffee entrepreneurs, as well as managers of the tourism village. The theoretical framework used in this study is the concept of innovation proposed by Batoebara (2021). The findings indicate that the development of the Petung Disaster Education Tourism Village is supported by various forms of innovation in the aspects of tourism, business, and culture as responses to limited resources and post-eruption social dynamics following the 2010 Merapi eruption. In the tourism aspect, innovation is reflected in the flexible management of tourism activities based on the daily lives of the community, including the emergence of new educational packages such as vegetable planting activities and catfish farming aimed at kindergarten and elementary school students. From the business aspect, the managers implement marketing innovations using Instagram social media and a flexible system of tour packages and pricing adjusted to tourists’ budgets, as an adaptive strategy to reach a broader market. Meanwhile, in the cultural aspect, innovation is manifested through the integration of gamelan into tourism packages, the transformation of performances from wayang kulit (shadow puppetry) to wayang orang (human theater), and the relocation of rehearsal activities to the village hall to support cultural sustainability and accessibility, although this aspect still faces serious challenges in the form of low regeneration among younger generations.