SUSTAINABLE TOURISM INFRASTRUCTURE AND DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN ASEAN: BOROBUDUR AND DESTINATION COMPETITIVENESS

Abstract

Tourism infrastructure across ASEAN is expanding quickly, yet its quality, integration, and distribution of benefits remain uneven. This extended abstract compares how infrastructure is managed in selected ASEAN destinations, using Indonesia’s Super-Priority Destinations, especially Borobudur, as anchor cases and Singapore as the regional benchmark. A qualitative comparative case design is applied to secondary data policy documents, regional strategic plans, academic studies, and teaching materials across five paired cases, which are analysed through three strategic dimensions: sustainable tourism, digital transformation, and destination competitiveness. The findings show that regional leaders excel in intermodal connectivity, data integration, and consistent service standards, whereas Indonesia’s main strengths are its cultural and natural capital and its scale. Indonesia, however, still faces fragmented last-mile connectivity, uneven basic services, limited real-time data, and weak lifecycle financing. Borobudur illustrates both the promise and the risks of rapid investment: new gateways, a relocated trading area, and a single destination management model coexist with social resistance, concentrated benefits, and multi-authority complexity. The study proposes the Integrated Sustainable Tourism Infrastructure or ISTI Model, which links the three dimensions through collaborative governance, lifecycle financing, and an integrated data platform, with periodic evaluation as a feedback loop. Theoretical and policy implications for ASEAN are discussed.