THE ROLE OF MILLENNIALS ON PRESERVING HERITAGE Asmyta Surbakti and Vanesia Amelia Sebayang Fakultas Ilmu Budaya – Universitas Sumatera Utara Email: [email protected] / [email protected] Abstract The 21st century is known as the age of postmodern tourism and heritage has been associated to postmodern tourism consumption. Postmodern tourism seek cultural and heritage experiences that become an essential part of the consumption practices. Millennials are open-minded, technologically, innovative, and creative generation. This generation is predicted as the largest market in industrial world and potentially as social difference. Cultural studies called this phenomenon as subculture where they individually sharing on ideology and certain practices. This article uses qualitative method with quantitative data. Data consist of primary data and secondary data. The data collection techniques are obtained by doing depth interview, observation, library research, and online and analyzed by using postmodernism and cultural studies theories. As the result, Indonesian millennials are excepted take part on 4.0 Industrial Revolution for tourism and travel services in one of the 12 sector in General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Heritage has been a cluster of creative industry that worth doing for millennials. Social difference is a life style for those millennials community that concerns with culture and heritage. The role of millennials are important on preserving heritage because by 2020 until 2030 they are supposed to make up 70% of the total productive age population in Indonesia. Keywords: Postmodern tourism, heritage, millennials, life style, and 4.0 Industrial Revolution. Introduction Cultural heritage is a universal trend of the postmodern society in this 21st century. Cultural heritage, either tangible or intangible, and the local culture that it holds are vital as they contain the local culture values of the group of people who inherit the culture. Cultural heritage is a destination and the main attraction for postmodern tourists and it has its own unique characteristics that make it different from the mass tourism. The reproduction of the past cultural heritage, packed attractively, is correlated to the consumption pattern of postmodern tourists, that is, indirectly involves the local cultures. This is the reason why cultural heritage is ‘exploited’ massively in many places as well as in Indonesia. The tugging of importance between cultural researchers/artists and tourism practices, and accusation often occurs as tourism are considered to be exploiting the cultural heritage too much. Postmodern tourists use intellectual acuity in appreciating the messages of the cultural heritage that they see and build their own assessment of it. It is important to note that postmodern tourists are the generation of baby boomers and their tendency of travelling is to gain knowledge of the traditional social values and everything that is connected to the past. For them, authenticity and originality are two essential key points to have in the product offered to them. The combination of local and global features as this is the postmodernism manifestation, tourism is conceptualized as a complex string related to production. In postmodern tourism, reality and fantasy are tightly connected (Nuryanti, 1996:250). Post-modern tourism is also known as heritage tourism and cultural tourism. Cultural heritage is considered important for the millennials generation as the 4.0 Industrial Revolution is suspected to have changed the way people live and work. The millennials have big opportunities to success since they have the ability to utilize information technology. Compared to the previous generations, the millennials are more diverse in ethnicity, more prosperous economically, and more educated. According to Rosyadi (2018), 52% of the workforce or around 52.6 million of employments in Indonesia potentially replaced with digital systems. This is a huge chance for millennials in Indonesia. In the attempt to cut the negative effects of technology towards millennials Proceeding of The 2nd Bali International Tourism Conference, 8 – 10 November 2018 237 and the shifting demands of job competition, technology can be used to look more deeply into the issues of cultural preservation, postmodern tourism, and the development of creative industry. The society and millennials in Indonesia, basically, can be said, understand about cultural heritage preservation and postmodern tourism development. However, the resources are not yet directly proportional to that we have. There are about 81 millions of millennials in Indonesia at the moment and it is obviously a massive amount of human resource to build Indonesia. But since the launch of Asean Economic Community (AEC) in December 2015, there has not been any significant role of the millennials in Indonesia in terms of cultural heritage preservations and cultural tourism in the association of the countries in AEC. Two important fields in the part of ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Blueprint is Preservation and Promotion of Asean Cultural Heritage, as well as Promotion of Cultural Creativity and Industry. The goal of AEC is to integrate the regional economy of Southeast Asia with the main characteristics being the forming of single production-based market, a competitive economic area, as well as an equitable and balanced economic development area (Surbakti, 2015). Method This article uses qualitative method with quantitative data. Data consist of primary data and secondary data. The data collection techniques are obtained by doing depth interview, observation, library research, and online. Related or required data are analyzed by using postmodern and cultural studies theories then. Result and discussion The millennials generation is the fourth generation after the traditionalist, baby boomers, and generation X in the graph of human generation in the world. According to Ali (2015), the millennials are known to be very different from the previous generations, they are considered special for their skills in utilizing the internet technology and pop/music culture. The millennials generation tend to live as hedonists and they cannot be separated from technology, especially internet; entertainment is their basic need. Further explanation from Ali in his writing with the title “Generasi Millennial Indonesia: Tantangan dan Peluang Pemuda Indonesia”, he elaborated that there are still very few research and study about the millennials generation in Indonesia. Viewing from the population in Indonesia, the number of those between the age of 15-34 is very big, around 34,45%. This huge number is actually the asset of human resource related to the issues of cultural preservations and postmodern tourism development, which has been the global tendency. In the writings of the speakers in various seminars about the millennials generation in Indonesia, it is often explained that 81 million out of 255 million of people in Indonesia are millennials or in the age of 18 to 38 this year. This generation tends to care less about social matters around them, such as politics or economic development of Indonesia. They are often called as the “victims” of technology development. Where should they go? Should they hide? Such are the questions asked by millennials. The negative impact of technology on students has long been the attention of Daradjat (1982), who described that the moral deterioration of students is caused by the development of technology that is not balanced with the improvement of manners quality. On the other hand, technology development is crucial and is extremely needed by the nation in this globalization era. As explained before, the millennials generation in Indonesia actually know and understand about cultural heritage preservation and postmodern tourism development. For instance, many cultural heritage preservation organizations are formed throughout Indonesia, such as Badan Pelestarian Proceeding of The 2nd Bali International Tourism Conference, 8 – 10 November 2018 238 Pusaka Indonesia (BPPI) in Jakarta, as a vessel the kind of organizations in Indonesia. There is also Pan Sumatra Net (Pansum Net) in Medan that accommodates other cultural heritage preservation organizations in Sumatera Island. There are many more of such organizations in Indonesia that have successfully preserved the cultural heritage in their own areas. But in relation to the term “millennial”, there has not been any real doings of this generation that are seen in the field of cultural preservation. The hedonist way of life is still the choice picked and the most important thing for them is style; they have not yet realized the big opportunity waiting right in front of their eyes. According to Karnawati (in Rosyadi, 2018), the 4.0 Industrial Revolution is going to wipe out 35% types of work in the upcoming 5 years, and in 10 years, it will increase to 75%, because, gradually, human jobs will be replaced with digital program technology. This is a huge chance for millennials in Indonesia. Central issues of AEC 2015, especially in tourism, are still relevant to this moment. In AEC 2015, there are 8 fields included in Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) and one of them is skilled labour. Preservation attempt and cultural heritage as the central theme of postmodern tourism may synergize the preservation and continuity of the heritage of ASEAN countries in the differences and similarities dynamics. It is estimated that ASEAN tourism will contribute