Worker, Consignee, Manager: How Indonesian Tourism Policy Orders the Host Community, 2009–2025

Abstract

Indonesian tourism legislation has repeatedly recognized host communities as workers, consignees, and managers, yet the legal significance of this ordering remains insufficiently examined. This article analyzes how national tourism policy constructed community entitlements between 2009 and 2025. A qualitative critical socio-legal documentary approach combined problem-representation analysis with the social construction of target populations. Five national instruments comprising 37,514 words, including official statutory elucidations, were examined through entitlement coding, lexical analysis, and diachronic comparison. Law Number 10 of 2009 established priority rights to employment, consignment, and management, whereas Law Number 18 of 2025 retained the sequence but substituted priority opportunities. The amendment added access to information and cultural protection while deleting specified governmental duties and sanction provisions within the tourism statute. Its official elucidation defined eligible communities at regency or municipal scale and interpreted management as using existing resources to support tourism enterprises, exemplified by transportation services. Across the corpus, terminology identifying customary law communities, customary tenure, and land as property was absent. These findings indicate that statutory recognition primarily organizes access to tourism-related economic activities without establishing a clearly defined pathway to destination governance authority. Legal reform requires clearer duties, enforceable procedures, and effective recognition of affected communities' substantive interests.