Social Media in City Branding Strategic: Empirical study in Solo City, Indonesia

The trend of tourist visits in Indonesia after Covid-19 has increased more than the period before Covid-19, despite being under intense competitive pressure. This competitive pressure drives the trend of city branding integrating with digital-based marketing communications to increase city attractiveness. This study is to explore how social media promotion and electronic word-of-mouth (e-wom) play a mediating role in city branding on tourists' decisions to visit and city image. This investigation was carried out with a quantitative methodology. Data was gathered via an online survey intended for Solo visitors. Purposive sampling was used to select 100 respondents to participate in this study. Data were analyzed using Smart PLS 4.0. The results showed that city branding directly affects city image and visiting decisions, but city image has an insignificant influence on visiting decisions. Visitor decisions and city branding can be influenced indirectly by social media promotion and e-wom. E-wom's indirect effect can mediate the impact of a city's image on visit decisions. The research findings that city branding - social media promotion - city image - e-wom - visiting decisions are in one indirect effect path.