THE OPTIMAL ROUTE FOR CULTURAL TOURISM IN THE SPECIAL REGION OF YOGYAKARTA

Abstract

The Special Region of Yogyakarta is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Indonesia and offers a wide range of cultural wealth. Consequently, it is interesting to explore the many tourist attractions. A tour taking the optimal route can, of course, provide efficiency in terms of distance and travel time while also providing a quality experience to the traveler. Ignoring these factors can lead to a failed trip. To determine the optimal route, we spread a questionnaire to travelers (n = 507) and obtained their preferences when traveling to be used in designing the optimum route. We present two scenarios in this paper for comparison: the first is the common way tourists determine travel routes, and the second uses a genetic algorithm approach. We found that determining the optimal route of travel using methods of genetic algorithms can shorten the total travel distance of tourists by 68.8 kilometers (29.20%), reduce the travel time by 137.60 minutes (8.87%), and at the same time maintain tourist preferences during their tour. We also propose efforts to improve the optimization of cultural tourist travel routes, focusing on the travel aspects between tourist destinations and on the aspects of the tourist destination itself.