Abstract

The presence of the Dewi Mangrove as a new tourist destination will benefit the local community. Unfortunately, the existence of the Dewi Mangrove as an ecotourism destination does not seem to be widely known by the public. One reason why the existence of Dewi Mangroves is not known by tourists is the lack of word-of-mouth marketing from Dewi Mangroves tourists. This study aims to examine the effect of aesthetical experiential quality and perceived value on word of mouth marketing mediated by tourist satisfaction. The research was conducted using a quantitative method with aesthetical experiential quality and perceived value as independent variables, word of mouth marketing as the dependent variable, and tourist satisfaction as a mediating variable. The data used in this study is primary data obtained from questionnaires. The respondent in this study were 100 Dewi Mangrove Ecotourism tourists who were selected by accidental sampling technique. The data was collected from 22 December 2022 to 8 January 2023. The collected data were analyzed using the partial least squares (PLS) technique. The results showed that aesthetical experiential quality and perceived value did not directly affect word of mouth marketing, but tourist satisfaction was able to mediate the relationship between aesthetical experiential quality and perceived value on word of mouth marketing. The results of this study indicate the importance of Dewi Mangrove Ecotourism management to pay attention to tourist satisfaction, because it has been proven to be able to encourage word of mouth marketing both directly and as a mediation for aesthetical experiential quality and perceived value felt by tourists.