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The Bali government has been developing and promoting 100 Desa Wisata (tourist village) since 2013 and is expected to be finished by 2018.

Until this year, 53 tourist villages have been completed, with some 47 villages still in the development phase. Nyoman Wardawan, Head of the Development of Destination Tourism in Bali, said that they’re currently still focusing on preparing the infrastructure and facilities.

The government is in charge of developing the facilities and infrastructures. Other than that, they also require the commitment and support from the local community.

“From the targeted 100 Tourist Villages, we’re finishing up on 57 villages, while for the rest we’re still at the stage of socializing the plan because to build them we need the commitment from the local people,” Wardawan said in Denpasar on Tuesday, as quoted by Berita Dewata. “We need to make it convenient and safe, as well as to ensure the authenticity of the villages.”

To build the villages the government has allocated a yearly budget amounting to IDR200 million. “While the program has been running for five years, but until now we’ve only managed to build 15 villages per year because we’re not receiving the full amount of the budget. If it did we would’ve completed it by now.”

At the moment, the most developed village is Desa Wisata Panglipuran in Jatiluwuh, and a handful of others. “We’re optimistic that as long as we have the full budget then we can complete our target,” he said. “We still have other locations waiting to be developed, such as in Gianyar, Klungkung, and Karangasem.”

To further promote the existence of the tourist villages, Wardawan plans to collaborate with private companies to build the digital infrastructure. “We still haven’t been able to do that because of the limited budget, so that’s why we plan to work together with private entities. We’ll use digital marketing [to promote this] and create a website so people can easily access and see what makes the tourist villages so unique.”

Photo: www.pegipegi.com.