Post-Pandemic Tourism: Exploring the Relationship Among the Natural Environment, Local Communities and Tourists

Tourism during the pandemic experienced a significant decline, and experts could not predict it beforehand. The closure of tourist destinations and the ban on travel became one of the factors for tourism to stagnate and even decline. The purpose of this study is to explore post-pandemic tourism from the relationship between the natural environment, community, and tourists. The methods used to obtain research data were observations, interviews, and literature studies. The data were analyzed using qualitative descriptive data analysis. Triangulation was used to validate the data by comparing them. The results showed that post-pandemic tourism development in Payo Tourism Village has a relationship between interrelated aspects, namely environmental aspects, local communities, and tourists. In the environmental aspect, tourist attraction has an impact on two different sides. On the one hand, COVID-19 has a positive impact on the environment because the environment becomes sustainable and avoids pollution. However, it has a negative impact because the tourist attraction environment is not maintained, so that beauty and tidiness are ignored. In the aspect of local communities, the community is very dependent on government policies and tourist demand; therefore, in managing Payo Tourism Village, the process starts from demand, then resource support, and becomes a host/tour service provider. Furthermore, in the aspect of tourists, it is very dependent on the policies issued by the government, then the trend of tourism demand towards quality tourism, and then just making tourist visits. This research contributes to finding the right tourism concept in post-pandemic tourism development