Community Empowerment in Batu Tourism City Through Local Wisdom- Based Creative Economics

Tourism is a variety of tourist activities and is supported by various facilities and services provided by the community, businesses, central government, and the local government. Currently, many tourist places emerge with their own unique appeals. One of them is Batu Tourism City, which is always crowded with tourists from various cities and regions in Indonesia. Batu is indeed known as one of the leading tourist cities in Indonesia because of its potential for extraordinary natural beauty. This kind of creative economy is growing rapidly in Indonesia, including in Batu. In addition, the emergence of various thematic tours encourages the growth of creative economy in society. The purpose of this research is to formulate a community empowerment strategy for creative economy actors based on local wisdom (i.e. batik fabric) in Batu. The research used the AHP and ANP analysis. The results show that batik can be used as a promising business opportunity as well as a platform for cultural learning and preservation by creating batik patterns based on local wisdom. The growth of a society’s creative economy will give a profound impact on people's lives, especially in terms of their economy.