Legal Protection for Tourists as Accident Victims: Reconstructing the Liability of Tourism Operators in Indonesia

Abstract

Abstract

Documented accidents at tourism destinations illustrate the need for a legal framework that connects tourists' rights, operators' duties, safety standards, and effective remedies. This article examines legal protection for tourists who become accident victims and reconstructs the liability model for tourism destination operators. It employs normative legal research using statutory, conceptual, and policy approaches; a case approach is not claimed because the manuscript does not establish a defined corpus of accident cases or judicial decisions. The analysis of Law No. 10 of 2009 as most recently amended by Law No. 18 of 2025 finds that Article 20 reformulates and expands tourist rights, Article 23 is deleted, while the operator duties in Article 26 remain central to safety and security. At the same time, changes to the sanction architecture and the absence of an integrated statutory mechanism for safety standards, victim compensation, and attribution of management failure justify further reconstruction. Administrative, civil, and criminal liability are treated as legal-consequence regimes, whereas corporate responsibility is treated as a subject-and-attribution dimension operating across those regimes. The proposed model integrates an Indonesian-law-based duty of care, operational indicators of management failure, risk governance, and clearer remedial pathways.