Appreciative Inquiry as an Approach for Technology-Based Business Improvements: Partnership Project at a Vehicle Rental SME in Bali

Ketut Bagong Rental is a vehicle rental company founded in 2008, competing in an intensely competitive and saturated market in Bali, managing over 250 vehicles with exclusively foreign clientele. The SME, which is a form of tourism entrepreneurship, has a critical competitive advantage in the form of in-house renter’s insurance and in-house repair shop. Ketut Bagong Rental partners with academics from Universitas Dhyana Pura (Undhira) and a Heilbronn University student were together to improve the company’s business processes and develop its marketing strategy of market diversification. The Undhira team applied Appreciative Inquiry (AI) as an alternative approach for community development projects, using the 5D cycle of Define, Discover, Dream, Design, and Destiny/Deliver. The stages of AI, the results obtained, and the lessons learned from applying this approach to problem-solving in service-based tourism enterprise—using relevant information technology to improve business processes and increase business resilience.