Potential mapping of rural tourism clusters through application of spatial decision making system as a base of sustainable tourism planning

Indonesia is rich of nature, culture, customs, culinary, and religions spread over many regions. The majority of Indonesia territory is rural areas. The existing potentials and attractions in rural areas make a lot of villages developed into tourist villages. One region that has quite a high number of tourist villages is Semarang Regency, Central Java, Indonesia. The high number of tourist villages that belongs to Semarang Regency is actually not in line with the high length of stay of the visiting tourists. Therefore, it requires the right method to develop the rural tourism potential, which is cluster-based rural tourism development. The purpose of this research is to develop a methodology for identifying the potential area of rural tourism clusters in geographic feature. The method used is Geographic Information System (GIS) based Kernel Density Estimation (KDE). The analysis brings to a map that identifies regions with strong cluster potential to develop the informative rural tourism. The map generated clearly indicates that the regions with strong potentials to become tourist village cluster in Semarang Regency are the combined cluster areas of Ungaran and Bergas District and Sumowono District. Hopefully the generated map will be informative for the stakeholders, the policy makers, and the tourism development area organizers.