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The Indonesian Government has officially designated Belitung as one of the tourism special economic zones (TSEZ) in Indonesia since 2019, along with Morotai, Singhasari, Tanjung Lesung, and Mandalika (Situmorang et al., 2019; Utomo, 2019). Some of the reasons for this designation were due to success stories from many other countries which resulted in socio-economic growth, local economic development, technology transfer, and income equality (Farole & Akinci, 2011; Ginting et al., 2018; Ketels, 2015; Situmorang et al., 2019), through economic intensification and penetration (Bagiryan et al., 2018). To implement the special economic zone (SEZ) in Indonesia, there have been various efforts made by the government, including law enforcement toward ensuring legal certainty and investment predictability (Ginting et al., 2018), completing infrastructure and the facilities (Adam, 2019), and creating competitiveness in human resources through conscious tourism education (Febiyansah et al., 2018). These diverse efforts were comprehensible considering that TSEZ is a driving force for the country's socio-economic growth attained from job creation, welfare, foreign exchange, tax revenue, and infrastructure (Farole & Akinci, 2011). Tourism is also immensely useful for attracting foreign investment and transferring technology and expertise (Sobirov, 2018).
Tourism has developed significantly in Belitung. In particular, the success of Laskar Pelangi novels and films (Laskar Pelangi, English term: Rainbow troops) and the high tourism potential of the region have made Belitung widely known nationally and internationally (Nofiyanti et al., 2018; O’Connor & Sangkyun, 2014). Green tourism is considered to be the one of the best alternative income sources for Belitung since tin could no longer as a main regional commodity due to the fact that its production and contribution to the gross domestic product has been continuously decreasing (Wardhani, R. S., & Valeriani, 2016). Moreover, the effect of tin mining has caused significant damage to the natural and social environment such as landslides, pollution, and horizontal conflicts (Nurtjahya et al., 2017).
An initial field study conducted in 2019 showed that there was a significant growth in various tourism-based businesses from air transportation, hotels/resorts, and restaurants, to various businesses related to natural empowerment such as honey production with local specialties, turtle breeding, and sea coral planting. The community has improved and prepared to take part in the operation of Belitung TSEZ, even though they possibly do not understand the concept of TSEZ. The community has a high level of commitment and expectations for the tourism sector amidst the threat of environmental damage due to tin mining which has been exploited for hundreds of years in Belitung Island (Nurtjahya et al., 2017). In 2018, there were an increase in tourist visit to Belitung, accompanied by the establishment of new flight routes to Belitung by several airlines for instances Air Asia, Lion Air, and Garuda Indonesia of course as the state owned airline company. Unfortunately, since 2019 there has been a significant decline in the traffic levels due to the normalization of airline ticket prices. As a result, a considerable decline in the number of tourists to Belitung has forced in a decrease in hotel occupancy rates and sales turnover for a lot of tourism-based businesses. Moreover, the operation of TSEZ in Belitung, especially Tanjung Kelayang, has not yet been able to attract investors (Adam, 2019). Moreover, only the fishing industry was not affected by the increase in air transport costs. However, the amount of fish captured have increased mainly since there has been less fishing by foreigners following the implementation of Article 69 Paragraph (4) of Law Number 15/2009 regarding the sinking of illegal fishing vessels in Indonesian oceans. This shows the success of sustainable fishing.