The Economic Potential of Tourist Destinations of Pangandaran Beach, West Java Indonesia

Pangandaran Beach Tourist Area (KWPP) has beautiful natural potential to be developed as a famous tourist destination and visited by many tourists. In doing tourism activities, many things are affected, namely economic, ecological and social. The development of a tourist destination aims to obtain maximum economic value without sacrificing the existing ecological and social aspects. On the contrary, efforts to conserve nature or ecology in general and the existing social values should not inhibit the creativity for optimal economic growth. Therefore, a research to determine consumer preferences for Pangandaran Tourism Area by using TCM methods in KWPP needs to be done. Analysis of consumer preference management of KWPP is done using Travel cost method (TCM). Based on the analysis results of consumer preferences with the travel cost method, the value of consumer surplus for each consumer or tourist is obtained, that is Rp. 3.103.960 with economic value of KWPP usage of 26 billion rupiah. This shows that the economic potential of KWPP is still big to be developed.     Keywords: tourist, consumer preference, consumer surplus, TCM, Pangandara