The Role of Locally-Based Regulations and Nature Tourism Marketing Strategies on Muna Island

Abstract

This study examines how locally grounded regulation and nature-tourism marketing can be integrated to strengthen destination governance on Muna Island, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia. Using a qualitative intrinsic case-study design, the research combines semi-structured in-depth interviews, field observation, documentary analysis, and regulatory review. Informants represented local government, customary leaders, tourism businesses, destination managers, communities surrounding tourism sites, and tourism academics or observers. The analysis focuses on six major destinations—Lake Napabale, Liangkabori Cave, Meleura Beach, Topa Bathing Area, Walengkabola Beach, and Moko Lake—and interprets the findings through tourism governance, community-based tourism, living-law, destination marketing, and institutional perspectives. The findings show that Muna’s nature-tourism potential is constrained less by the absence of attractions than by fragmented destination management, uneven basic facilities, weak visitor-information systems, sporadic promotion, and the absence of a locally specific regulatory architecture that translates customary values into operational standards. Four local principles—pamoa-moasigho, popia-piara, poangka-angatau, and poadha-adhati—provide a normative basis for environmental stewardship, visitor safety, service ethics, collective harmony, and dispute resolution. Marketing becomes more credible when these principles are converted into a consistent destination narrative, integrated tourism packages, transparent service standards, digital information, and inter-destination connectivity. The study proposes a mutually reinforcing policy–marketing mechanism: locally based regulation establishes trust, safety, participation, and service certainty, while culturally grounded marketing converts those institutional qualities into a distinctive destination promise. The resulting approach positions regulation not as a constraint on marketing but as part of the tourism product itself and as a foundation for sustainable nature-tourism competitiveness on Muna Island.