The Influence of Cultural Values, Tourist Motivation, and Word Of Mouth towards the Destination Image and the Implications of Visit Intention (Study on Tourist Destinations in Yogyakarta)

Yogyakarta is the second largest tourist destination after Bali and is one of the tourism destinations in Indonesia, which is important because of its appeal. Unfortunately, Yogyakarta only ranks far away from expectations as areas that obtains the title as a tourism city. Overall, there was indeed an increase in the number of foreign tourists visiting Yogyakarta through Adi Sucipto Airport from 2012 until 2014, but the growth rate decreased drastically. This study aims to analyze the tourist visiting behavior patterns by using variables of tourists' cultural values, tourists' motivation to visit, word of mouth as an independent variable, destination image as an intervening variable, and tourists' intentions to visit as a dependent variable. The method used in this research is qualitative descriptive and causality methods. The samples taken were 350 tourists visiting five (5) major tourist destinations in Yogyakarta. The research result showed that cultural values influenced the image of destination, yet did not influence the tourists' intention to visit. Meanwhile, the motivation to visit did not influence the destination image but influenced on the intention to visit. Word of mouth variable influenced the destination image and the intentions to visit. Destination image mediated the influence of cultural values and word of mouth to the tourists' intentions to visit, but did not mediate the influence of motivation to the tourists' intentions to visit.