The tourism village is now becoming the one of the potential tourism in Bantul regency. Many villages are trying to develop their potentials charm, so that they can become magnets to attract tourist visitation. One of those villages is Goa Cemara Tourism Village. Goa Cemara Tourism Village is located in Patihan, Gading Sari, Sanden, Bantul, Yogyakarta. It is situated about 30 km from the city center. Geographically, Goa Cemara Tourism Village is actually a coastal area. However, one third of that area is used as local residence. The rest of that area is used for agricultural and beach tourism district which become the main attraction of this village. The other one that becomes the attraction of Patihan Village is Goa Cemara Beach which provides unique beach tourism object. This beach offers a “shady” atmosphere of the beach where we can find a lot of fir trees surrounding that can give a refreshing air and make it different from other beaches.
Goa Cemara Tourism Village also offers cultural tourism activity. Almost every holiday, Goa Cemara Tourism Village holds cultural performances in Goa Cemara Beach. The performances usually perform a variety of traditional arts. One of the performances that have always been awaited is Gejog Lesung. Gejog Lesung is one of the traditional arts of Bantul which is usually performed by old women. Those old women beat the traditional equipment of agriculture namely lesung to make a beautiful melody.
Other than having celebration every holiday, Goa Cemara Tourism Villagers have also a routine agenda of traditional festival that will usually be held on 1st of Muharram, the Islamic new year. This festival will be started from Balai Dusun Patihan and finished at Goa Cemara Beach. One of the uniqueness of this festival is a goat called ‘kendhit’ which becomes the festival icon. Kendhit Goat is a goat which has a white circular line on the goat belly called ‘songsong’ as a symbol that Goa Cemara local people are ready to welcome the new year by better wishes.
Goa Cemara Beach becomes more attractive because it is the one of the beaches that has turtle conservation. Not only having nature tourism we can also get an education tourism in this beach. This turtle conservation site is on the west side of the beach. This turtle conservation was built in 2010 and it has now continuously developed. Agricultural systems of this village are also interesting because they are integrated each other. The agriculture and fisheries sector are developed by aquaponics system, the freshwater fishery system that use plants clean the water. Other than having beach and cultural tourism, Goa Cemara Tourism Village also afford artificial tourism like playground and outbound area. The location of those areas is not far from Goa Cemara Beach area.
The success of the development of Goa Cemara Tourism Village is because of the role of the Local Tourism Awareness Association or Pokdarwis that always try to invite the local people to establish Goa Cemara tourism potency. The locals realize that their area has potential that could give a good benefit for the society. Initially Goa Cemara Beach was not as popular as now. When we asked to the people about beach tourist destination in the Bantul, they remember immediately Parangtritis Beach. But, one day, one of Pokdarwis member in Patihan Village saw a beautiful fir trees that might become valuable attraction that can not be provided by Parangtritis or Samas Beach. In 2008, the villagers worked together to open access to this beach. They are determined to popularize the “shady” coastal area that was not as famous as other beaches. This community empowerment began to get tourists visitation, and then they made Goa Cemara Business Cooperation to develop the tourism area.
