Promoting the Tourism at Pokoh, Dlingo, PBI UMY Lecturers Conducted English for Tourism Workshop

May 13, 2019, oleh: superadmin

The advancement of information technology has affected many sectors including the tourism industry. The social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and Path might affect the visitor rates of a tourist destination, in that a tourist destination can be quite crowded with tourists only because of the viral photos uploaded by both the tourist destination admin and those who have visited the place. Lepo Waterfall is one of the tourist attraction in Dlingo, Bantul, which is visited by foreign tourists. The people who live around Lepo, at Pokoh village to be exact, take this opportunity by opening stalls, homestays, and parking services. The increase in visits to Lepo, especially by foreign tourists, inspired three PBI lecturers, Fitria Rahmawati, M.Hum., Mariska Intan Sari, M.A. and Puthut Ardianto, M.Pd. to conduct community service project in the form of English for Tourism training at Pokoh, Dlingo, Bantul.
 
The training was conducted for five times from March 23 to Mei 12, 2019, and attended by 20 enthusiastic participants who are foodstall vendors, homestay owners, and parking lot owners. These five meetings covered the topics of At the Parking Lot, At the Homestay, At the Foodstall, and At the Waterfall. One of the training participants, Tri stated that in this training, they were really given exposure to conversation samples and also practices on how to pronounce the English words.
 
This was confirmed by Giriyanto, the Head of Pokoh I Village. Giriyanto admitted that this community service project conducted by the PBI lecturers really helped in motivating the villagers to learn English. He hopes that similar projects will continue to exist in the future, so that Pokoh people can confidently provide services to foreign tourists. Fitria added, she, Mariska and Puthut were assisted by a student team to develop a module and media for tourism promotion in the form of videos dedicated to Pokoh. Since this is the 2nd year of the community service project, she hopes that this video promotion media can be used on social media and are able to attract more tourists to come to Pokoh (puthut/mariska).