The Efforts of Tourist Information Center of Dinas Kebudayaan Dan Pariwisata (DISBUDPAR) to Provide Good Service for Tourists visiting Solo City

ABSTRACT

This final project report is written based on the job training in TIC of DISBUDPAR Surakarta. The job training was held on 16th February until 13th March, 2009. This final project report has purpose to describe the efforts of TIC to provide good service for tourists visiting Solo city. The result of this report shows that TIC has done some efforts to provide good service which refers to the five dimensions of service quality; tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. Tangibles include providing comfortable front office desk and seating arrangement and clean toilets, providing communication materials, and wearing neat uniform. Reliability includes giving information accurately. Responsiveness includes the willingness to help tourists and giving prompt service. Assurance includes having officers who have knowledge about Solo tourism and can speak English well. Empathy includes giving individualized attention to the tourists. However, TIC also has some weaknesses, such as TIC officers only master English as a foreign language, the location is hard to find, and their website is not complete enough. Therefore, the writer gives suggestions for TIC to have officers who can speak not only English but also other foreign languages, to post a big sign that show the location of TIC and to up-date their website.

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

A. Background

Tourism has a role in developing a country economically because it brings income and job opportunities. According to McIntosh and Gupta (1980) tourism is the sum of the phenomena and relationship arising from the interaction of tourists, business suppliers, host governments and host communities in the process of attracting and hosting these tourist and other visitors (in Pendit, 1990: 31). Therefore, government should concern with tourism industry because it is one of the important businesses which gives benefits in many aspects. Thus, they need to increase the quality of tourism it self.

Indonesia has many tourist destinations. One of them is Solo. Solo is also known as Surakarta. It is a city which is located in Central Java. Many tourists visit Solo because it has many tourist objects and culture, for example Kasunanan Palace, Puro Mangkunegaran, Radya Pustaka museum, Traditional dance and Solo culinary.

Dinas Kebudayaan dan Pariwisata (DISBUDPAR) is the local government institution which is handling the tourist matters and responsible for increasing the number of tourists coming to Solo. One of the duties is to give information about interesting objects, accommodations, guides and other informative things, like hotels, restaurants, pubs, etc in Solo to the tourists. Because of this, Dinas Kebudayaan dan Pariwisata (DISBUDPAR) build Tourist Information Center (TIC) as a division in handling tourists who visit it to get information about Solo. Therefore, the staffs of TIC should be kind, smart, and friendly to attract the tourists visiting Solo. The important thing is they should give good service to the tourists to create good image of Solo.

The writer chose Tourist Information Center as the place for job training due to the fact that Tourist Information Center has an important role in giving good service to the tourists in order to create good image of Solo city. Therefore, the writer was highly interested to know more about the services of Tourist Information Center.