Designing the Development of the Karo Heritage Museum to Enhance Local Tourism Attractiveness

Abstract

This study examines an integrated strategy for developing the Karo Heritage Museum as a cultural and educational tourism destination. Rather than treating promotion, visitor experience, stakeholder collaboration, and digitalization as separate issues, the study combines these dimensions within a context-specific SWOT framework. A qualitative descriptive design was used, drawing on field observation, in-depth semi-structured interviews with 12 purposively selected informants, document analysis, thematic analysis, and SWOT analysis. The findings show that the museum's principal strengths lie in its authentic Karo cultural collections, historical value, educational potential, and strategic location in Berastagi. Its development is constrained by limited professional management capacity, the absence of specialized guiding services, predominantly conventional exhibition practices, weak digital promotion, and insufficient integration with tourism stakeholders. The analysis also identifies opportunities arising from educational tourism, demand for interactive museum experiences, digital communication, youth interest in cultural identity, and partnerships with government, educational institutions, cultural communities, and tourism businesses. The study contributes an integrated cultural-educational tourism development framework in which institutional strengthening, visitor-experience design, stakeholder collaboration, digital transformation, and SWOT-based strategic priorities are treated as mutually reinforcing components. The resulting strategy prioritizes professional management, interactive interpretation, digital promotion and services, partnership-based tourism packages, and diversified funding to strengthen the museum's competitiveness and long-term sustainability.