The findings highlight the growing importance of digital marketing for agrotourism destinations competing for visitors in an increasingly connected tourism market. Attractive agricultural experiences alone may not be enough if potential visitors cannot easily discover and understand what a destination offers online.
Sangkanika Edugarden Faces a Digital Promotion Challenge
Sangkanika Edugarden Agrotourism, also known as Sangkanika Yellow Dragon Fruit Agrotourism, is located in Sangkanurip Village, Cigandamekar District. The destination combines agricultural education with yellow dragon fruit cultivation, fruit-picking activities, local culinary experiences, and organic farming education.
However, visitor numbers recorded between June and November 2025 fluctuated rather than showing a stable upward trend. A preliminary survey of 15 visitors in July 2025 also identified inadequate digital promotion as one of the main concerns. The researchers noted that weak promotion could reduce visitors’ willingness to return and potentially affect the long-term sustainability of the agrotourism business.
The issue reflects a broader transformation in tourism. Travelers increasingly use digital media to search for destinations, compare alternatives, view experiences shared by others, and make travel decisions. As a result, tourism managers need promotional strategies that are visible, interactive, and adaptable to changing audience behavior.
Three Marketing Forces Under the Microscope
The researchers examined three promotional factors: influencers, social media, and tourism events.
Influencers can introduce destinations through personal experiences and visual content. Their credibility, authenticity, attractiveness, expertise, and relevance to a destination can influence how audiences perceive tourism products.
Social media provides a fast and interactive channel for distributing tourism information. The study considered factors such as responsiveness, content consistency, information relevance, and the effective use of social media platforms.
Tourism events provide another opportunity to create memorable experiences and generate promotional content. In agrotourism, activities such as harvest festivals, agricultural workshops, educational farming programs, and fruit-picking experiences can become attractions in their own right while generating material for digital promotion.
Study Involved 132 Visitors
The researchers used a quantitative approach and collected data from 132 Sangkanika Edugarden visitors during April and May 2026. Respondents completed a structured questionnaire using a five-point scale through Google Forms.
Social Media Shows the Strongest Link to Digital Promotion
The analysis found positive and statistically significant relationships between all three promotional factors and digital promotion.
Key findings include:
- Influencers → Digital promotion: coefficient 0.183, significance 0.010.
- Social media → Digital promotion: coefficient 0.418, significance 0.000.
- Tourism events → Digital promotion: coefficient 0.325, significance 0.000.
- Digital promotion → Competitiveness: coefficient 0.758, significance 0.000.
- Among the three factors, social media recorded the largest coefficient in its relationship with digital promotion, suggesting that it played the strongest role within the study model.
Together, influencers, social media, and tourism events explained 66.8 percent of the variation in digital promotion. Digital promotion, meanwhile, explained 57.4 percent of the variation in destination competitiveness. The remaining percentages were associated with factors outside the research model.
Digital Promotion Connects Marketing Strategies to Competitiveness
One of the study’s most important findings was the mediating role of digital promotion.
The researchers found that digital promotion significantly mediated the relationships between influencers, social media, tourism events, and destination competitiveness. The influencer pathway produced a Z-value of 2.062 and a p-value of 0.039. The social media pathway recorded a Z-value of 2.893 and a p-value of 0.004, while the tourism event pathway produced a Z-value of 2.635 and a p-value of 0.008.
In practical terms, this means that simply hiring influencers, maintaining social media accounts, or organizing tourism events may not be enough. Their contribution to competitiveness becomes stronger when these activities are connected to an effective digital promotion strategy.
The study also found that tourism events had the highest total effect on competitiveness at 0.468, followed by influencers at 0.256 and social media at 0.212 within the model.
Implications for Agrotourism Managers
The findings offer a practical direction for Sangkanika Edugarden and similar destinations. Rather than treating influencer marketing, social media, and tourism events as separate activities, managers can integrate them into one coordinated digital promotion strategy.
The researchers recommend collaborating with credible influencers, maintaining consistent and informative social media management, and organizing innovative tourism events that are actively promoted through digital platforms.
Such an approach can help agrotourism destinations communicate their unique experiences to wider audiences, strengthen destination image, improve the attractiveness of tourism products, and support visitor growth.
The findings are also relevant to community-based agrotourism. Agricultural destinations can offer more than scenery: visitors can learn about farming, interact with nature, experience local food, pick fruit, and engage directly with agricultural activities. Digital promotion can turn these experiences into stories and visual content that reach potential visitors beyond the destination’s immediate geographic area.
At the same time, the researchers caution that competitiveness is influenced by factors beyond the variables examined in this study. Future research could examine electronic word-of-mouth, content quality, brand image, audience engagement, and visit intention. Larger samples and comparisons among different tourism destinations could also provide broader evidence. The authors additionally recommend studying the effectiveness of individual platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.
Author Profiles
Fahmi Naha Bafil’Amali — Researcher in the Department of Agribusiness, Faculty of Agriculture, Universitas Swadaya Gunung Jati, Cirebon.
Wachdijono — Researcher and corresponding author in the Department of Agribusiness, Faculty of Agriculture, Universitas Swadaya Gunung Jati, Cirebon.
Akhmad Jaeroni — Researcher in the Department of Agribusiness, Faculty of Agriculture, Universitas Swadaya Gunung Jati, Cirebon.
Their work addresses issues at the intersection of agribusiness, digital marketing, tourism, and destination competitiveness.
Research Source
Article title: The Role of Digital Promotion in Mediating the Effects of Influencers, Social Media, and Tourism Events on the Competitiveness of Agrotourism (A Case Study of Sangkanika Edugarden Agrotourism)
Authors: Fahmi Naha Bafil’Amali, Wachdijono, and Akhmad Jaeroni
Journal: Indonesian Journal of Advanced Research (IJAR)
Volume: 5, Issue 8
Year: 2026
Pages: 1425–1444
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