Digital Transformation of Community-Based Marine Ecotourism MSMEs through ConservaTour™: Integrating Tourism Operations, Conservation Awareness, and Sustainable Entrepreneurship

Community-based marine tourism has strong potential to support local livelihoods, environmental education, and sustainable economic development. However, many local tourism organizers still operate informally, relying on manual promotion, fragmented booking processes, limited financial documentation, and weak integration between tourism activity and conservation practice. This study presents ConservaTour, a digital platform model designed to support the transformation of local marine tourism communities into more structured, accountable, and conservation-oriented micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). The platform was developed as a multi-tenant web-based information system that enables ecotourism operators to manage business identity, destinations, tour packages, schedules, reservations, payments, trip manifests, operational roles, and conservation-related information. The initial implementation focuses on Sira Ayu, a community-based marine tourism organizer in northern Indramayu, Indonesia, serving ecotourism activities around Pulau Biawak, Pulau Gosong, and Pulau Candikian. ConservaTour positions digitalization not only as a tool for market access, but also as an institutional mechanism to improve operational readiness, legal identity preparation, transparent financial records, customer trust, and conservation awareness. This paper argues that digital platforms for tourism MSMEs should not merely replicate commercial travel marketplaces. Instead, they should be designed around the specific needs of local operators, including limited administrative capacity, multi-role community participation, seasonal trip operations, environmental responsibility, and gradual formalization into legally recognized MSMEs. By combining tourism management features with conservation program documentation and stakeholder role assignment, ConservaTour offers a practical model for business innovation in community-based ecotourism. The proposed model contributes to entrepreneurship and MSME development by demonstrating how information systems can support grassroots business transformation, strengthen local tourism governance, and connect sustainable tourism practices with digital economic participation. The case suggests that locally grounded digital platforms can become enabling infrastructure for sustainable entrepreneurship, particularly in coastal and island communities where tourism value must be balanced with conservation responsibility.