Collaborative Integrated Sustainable Tourism Management Model Using System Dynamics: A Case of Labuan Bajo, Indonesia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

It ıs okay, just improve and extended introduction and section of discussion.

good luck.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper concentrates on one of Indonesia's important tourist regions that has, on the one hand, a positive impact on the area and the country by creating jobs and increasing productivity. But, on the other hand, it  has also caused damages on the environment and the lives of the local people. The abstract says that the study aims at  creating an "alternative model of sustainable tourism management using a system dynamics approach. "

The  analysis was done for the Labuan Bajo tourism area based on environmental, social, and economic components of the tourism ecosystem. It concentrated on the number and length of tourist visits, the development of hotel capacities, the growth of food production, of water demand, and waste production, as well as on the poverty patterns in the area. With the help of Causal Loop Diagrams the researchers studied past and present developments.  These data were translated into Causal Loop Diagrams for the environmental, social and economic aspects and combined for the sustainable tourism system. This Causal Loop Diagram was then translated into a Stock and Flow Diagram explaining the relationship between the components. Here one has to remark that even when enlarging the file the readability of the graph's information is very poor. This is also to some extent true for the model validation using Absolute Mean Error calculations  as visual validation between the reference and simulation patterns (fig. 7).  The Business As Usual (BAU) model simulation for the Labuan Bajo area offers then important results  with regard to the aspects that will exceed the tourism carrying capacity in the area. With regard to tourists' spending, the following sentence, and perhaps some part around it,  has to be modified; "Only 42% of the total foreign tourists shop for souvenirs, while 73% of the total foreign tourists shop for souvenirs." The BAU simulation shows that the tourism carrying capacity of accomodation will be exceeded in 2029, of clean water providing services in 2032, of waste production in 2032, of fish production in 2035 and of meat production in 2039. To solve such problems of exceeding tourism carrying capacities,  measurements are, therefore, essential.

The study does not, as said in the abstract, offer an "alternative model of sustainable tourism management," but certainly gives relevant suggestions to get to such a model. It  can be seen as an important contribution for any kind and way of reaching and guaranteeing sustainable tourism. 

I am not an English native speaker and, therefore, not a very good evaluator. I just found a small number of parts where, in my opinion, corrections should be done. A native speaker is, thus, still necessary.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The article investigates an alternative model of sustainable tourism management using a system dynamic approach based on an Indonesian case study. 
The article is very well written and is fully within the scope of the journal.
However, to be published, it needs some changes, especially in terms of structure.
Here are some suggestions for improving the article.

First of all, a final sentence should be added to the introduction describing how the article is structured: how many sections and what they are about.

The literature section needs to be completely redone. At the moment it looks more like an offshoot of the introduction that anticipates the description of the methodology.
instead it should focus more on articles that have already used a dynamic approach to study the tourism pattern of a given area, or at least on other models used to study tourism in the area or in similar areas to highlight the importance and originality of the approach used. 
Furthermore, the approach must be to say that author X used approach Y to achieve Z results.
Given the well-established use of the logic of sustainable tourism, it is not very useful to start from so far away by even defining what sustainability is. And anyway, while the first section would be better in the introduction, the second, which deals with the system dynamics approach, is to be moved to the methodology.

The methodology section should include two words of introduction and be divided into several sections, the first of which (2.1) is the one describing the case study and the second (2.2) the one describing the methodology. Here I would move the description of the model, which for now is improperly in the Literature Revue as well as the different steps taken to apply this approach, to the next section (3). I would also add a section or at least a description of how the data necessary for the analysis were collected and/or identified.

In the results, it is absolutely necessary to have a more critical and at the same time clear approach. Why are the three dimensions of sustainability in table 2? somewhere you have to say that you have broken down certain characteristics following a tripartite approach to the logic of sustainability. Why is table 3 so detailed if there is no comment? I would replace it with text only (perhaps leaving the full table in the appendix?) or with a small table showing an increase for domestic tourism and foreign tourism, taking as reference not single years but periods of five or ten years, and above all emphasising the differences with the pandemic period.
The same applies to tables 5,7,8. More detailed comments need to be added in all sections 4.2 and 4.3. 

And the discussion, which should be confronted with the literature review, which is not properly prepared at the moment, could, as it is set up now, safely be moved to the last section.

The conclusions, for their part, should have as their final paragraph the strong implications that can be deduced from the study for both policy makers and tourism operators.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

I have read the paper  “Collaborative Integrated Sustainable Tourism Management Model Using System Dynamics: A Case of Labuan Bajo, Indonesia” 

 

It seems to be interesting . The paper is structured into 6 paragraphs . After the introduction, there is a too much synthetic literature review. The third paragraph mainly contains a generic description of the method applied in the paper. The results are reported in the fourth paragraph. Then the discussion and the conclusions follow. 

 

In my opinion the main problem of this paper is that there are few data in order to apply a complex ( but not well described) method.  

 

The authors must describe the applied method in a less generic way and above all they must explain how this method can be applied to their dataset   

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

First of all, I would like to thank the authors for taking all my suggestions into consideration.

The article now seems to me to be ready for publication.

I only suggest

1.between title 3 and title 3.1 to add a few lines describing what happens in the following section.

2.to insert lines distinguishing the different dimensions in table 2

3. for greater readability of the whole work, to replace some of the tables e.g. 4 and 6 with graphs.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read such an interesting article.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

I've read the new version of the paper. Now for me it is ok 

Author Response

Thank you so much for your review and feedback. We really appreciate it