THE EFFECT OF THE PROMOTIONAL MIX ON THE DECISION OF TOURISTS VISITING THE REGENCY OF BULELENG

Bisma


Introduction
Entering 2020, with the spread of the corona virus 19  in various parts of the world, all tourism sectors around the world experienced a very heavy shock.This happened because many countries issued very strict restrictive rules regarding the entry and exit of humans to their countries to prevent the spread of the corona virus, so that many potential foreign tourists suspended their travel to various corners of the world.This has greatly impacted the tourism business on the island of Bali, many service bureaus have canceled trips to the island of Bali.The life of the island of Bali, which was once very busy and filled with thousands of foreign tourists, suddenly became quiet.Many hotel rooms are empty, resulting in the closure of most hotels and restaurants due to the absence of guests visiting.This quiet condition of Bali tourism began to occur in early 2020 when the COVID 19 pandemic had just begun to plague Indonesia until now, where there was a very significant decrease in the number of tourist visits.According to data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) of Bali Province, there has been a decrease in the number of foreign tourist arrivals from 2019 to 2021 as shown in Table 1 below 1, it is known that tourist visits in 2020 decreased by almost 66% from the number of tourist arrivals in 2019.Likewise in 2021, there is still a decline of 24% from 2020.This condition illustrates how hard tourism has been on the island of Bali due to due to the COVID-19 pandemic.The decrease in the number of tourist visits on the island of Bali will of course also have a direct impact on tourist visits to regencies on the island of Bali.As one of the largest regencies on the island of Bali, Buleleng Regency has the largest number of tourist attractions and tourist villages on the island of Bali.Judging from the data from the Bali Province Tourism Office, it is known that in 2020 Buleleng Regency has 42 tourist objects and 31 traditional villages.This is certainly a very crucial problem experienced by the people in Buleleng Regency who work in the tourism sector.The data on tourist visits to Buleleng Regency from the 2017 to 2021 period is as follows.Based on Table 2 above, it can be seen that the number of tourist visits to Buleleng Regency has fluctuated from 2017 to 2021.Although in 2021 it has increased 21% from 2020, but the number is still very far compared to tourist visits in 2019.Currently, the Buleleng Regency Tourism Office has tried as much as possible to make various efforts to improve the number of tourist visits so that it does not experience an extraordinary contraction, but due to restrictions on community activities during this Pandemic, the Buleleng Regency Tourism Office requires innovation in marketing its tourism products.One of the intensive efforts made by the Buleleng Regency Tourism Office and tourism actors is to carry out promotional activities as much as possible regarding the existing tourist objects in Buleleng Regency.
Promotion is one of the variables in the marketing mix which is very important to be implemented by companies in marketing their products or services.Sometimes the term promotion is used synonymously with the term sales even though what is meant is promotion.Understanding promotion according to (Kotler & Amstrong, 2012), "Promotion means activities that communicate the merits of the product and persuade target customers to buy it", meaning that promotion is an activity that communicates the benefits of a product and persuades target consumers to buy the product. .Promotions are designed as attractive as possible to reach the wider community through various media, this is so that companies can communicate with consumers.According to (Kuncoro, 2010), promotion objectives are simply divided into three types, namely: 1) Providing customer information about new products or features.2) Remind customers about the company's brand.3) Influence customers to buy.
Sellers can use customer promotions to drive short-term customer purchases or improve long-term customer relationships.Sales promotion is usually used in conjunction with advertising, personal selling, or other promotional mix tools.The promotional mix according to (Kotler & Amstrong, 2014) is a specific blend of advertising, sales promotion, public relations, personal selling, and direct marketing tools that companies use to persuasively communicate P-ISSN: 2476-8782 DOI: Nomor DOI Bisma: Jurnal Manajemen | 40 customer value and build customer relationships, a combination of promotional tools designed to achieve goals and provide information that directs consumers to be persuaded to make a purchase.
With the promotion mix related to advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations (publicity), and direct sales it is hoped that domestic tourists will prefer to visit the island.Bali compared to other tourism destinations on the island of Bali.This statement is in accordance with research conducted by (Areks & Nadjib, 2015) who found a real influence of the promotion mix on the level of natural tourism visits in Pangkep Regency.This research is further strengthened by the results of (Hartyanto & Pangestuti, 2020) research which found the influence of tourism promotion on the decision to visit tourists to the Malioboro Region of Yogyakarta.However, (Mahmudah, 2019) found different things where the Promotional Mix did not affect the tourist's decision to return to the Gemah Tulung Agung beach tourist attraction.Seeing the phenomena and differences in the results of previous research regarding the effect of conventional promotion on tourist visits, it is necessary to review the effect of the promotion mix on the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency during the COVID-19 pandemic.In general, this article aims to determine the effect of the promotion mix on the decision to visit tourists to Buleleng Regency, either partially or simultaneously.(Simamora, 2007) states that promotion is a company's effort to influence by seducing (Persuasive Communication) prospective buyers through all reference elements or promotional mix.Promotion is a series of activities to communicate, provide knowledge and convince people about a product so that he recognizes the greatness of the product, buys and uses the product, also binds his thoughts and feelings in a form of loyalty to the product.Based on the explanation above, it can be explained that the promotion mix is a company's total marketing communication program consisting of advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing that the company uses to achieve its marketing objectives.According to Kotler and Armstrong (2012), there are several promotion mix indicators from 5 dimensions, namely: 1) Advertising, the indicators include broadcast, internet, and outdoor.2) Sales promotion (sales promotion), the indicators include discounts, coupons, contests and events.3) Personal selling, the indicators include presentations, trade shows, and incentive programs.4) Public relations, indicators include press releases, sponsorships and web pages.And 5) Direct marketing, the indicators include catalogs, telephone marketing and mobile marketing.
The decision to visit here is almost the same as the decisions made by consumers when buying a product.The decision to visit is a stage where consumers have a choice and are ready to make a purchase or exchange between money and a promise to pay with ownership rights or use of an item or service (Kotler, 2005).Basically, the decision to visit is closely related to consumer behavior.According to (Kotler & Keller, 2016) the consumer behavior model starts from understanding consumer behavior models and external stimuli in the form of marketing stimuli, namely products, services, prices, distribution channels, and communication as well as other stimuli such as economics, technology, politics, and culture can affect consumer choice and has two choices in terms of consumer psychology, namely motivation, perception, learning, memory and also consumer characteristics, namely cultural, social, and personal.With the second selection, it can be known before making a purchase decision on a product or service, namely through the process of problem recognition, information seeking, alternative selection, purchase decisions, and post-purchase behavior.It is therefore the marketer's task to understand what happens in the consumer's consciousness between the arrival of outside marketing stimuli and the final purchase decision.
According to (Mowen & Minor, 2012) the simple consumer behavior model is: 1) Marketing Stimulus.The form of the marketing stimulus is the marketing strategies and methods developed by the company to offer its products.The stimulus aims to attract consumers to buy the goods or services produced and feel satisfied.These stimuli can be in the form of marketing mix strategies and STP (Segmenting, Targeting, and Positioning).2) Target Market Response (Target Audience Response).The target market response is the consumer's response both physically and mentally to the stimulus applied by the company.Based on this, the promotion mix as a form of marketing mix strategy will certainly be able to influence consumer behavior to make tourist visits to a place, so that the hypothesis can be described as follows: 1) Hypothesis 1: There is an effect of advertising on the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency.2) Hypothesis 2: There is an effect of sales promotion on the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency.3) Hypothesis 3: There is an effect of individual sales on the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency.4) Hypothesis 4: There is an influence of public relations on the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency.5) Hypothesis 5: There is an effect of direct sales on the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency.6) Hypothesis 6: There is an effect of advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, public relations and direct sales have a simultaneous effect on the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency.

Method
In this study, the independent variable is the promotion mix which consists of advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, public relations and direct marketing, while the dependent variable is the decision to visit tourists to the island of Bali.The type of research used is quantitative research.Quantitative research method is a research method based on the philosophy of positivism which is used to examine a particular population or sample.The population used in this study are tourists who visit Buleleng Regency, the number of which in the latest BPS data is 224,209.In this study, the sample determination method used is probability sampling, which is a sampling technique that provides equal opportunities or opportunities for each element or member of the population to be selected as a sample, Rahyuda in (Wijaya & Mandala, 2018).The sample used was 100 tourists who visited Buleleng Regency.The number of samples was obtained using the Slovin formula with an error tolerance of 10%.The use of an error of 10% is due to the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, making it difficult to find samples of tourists.The data collection method used includes document recording and questionnaires with a Likert scale of 1-5 as a measurement of the respondent's answer choices.
Validity and reliability tests were applied to questionnaires distributed to respondents to determine the validity and reliability in absorbing respondents' answers.Multiple linear regression data analysis was used to determine the effect of the independent variables on the dependent variable, preceded by classical assumption tests in the form of normality, multicollinearity and heteroscedasticity tests.To test the hypothesis, the t test is used to determine the effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable partially, while the F test is used to determine the effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable simultaneously.In addition, the analysis of the coefficient of determination is carried out to find out how much the independent variable can explain its influence on the dependent variable.

Results and Discussion
Based on the results of distributing questionnaires to 100 respondents, it can be seen that the 100 respondents used as research samples consisted of 92 domestic tourists and 8 foreign tourists.This condition proves that during the COVID-19 pandemic, domestic tourists are more dominant in visiting tourist objects in Buleleng Regency than foreign tourists.In testing the validity of the instrument as seen in the appendix, it is known that all questions on the questionnaire are valid.This can be known based on the significance test on the SPSS program which obtained a P value of <0.05.Meanwhile, for testing the reliability of the instrument, it is also known that all question items have a Cronbach alpha value above 0.6 (Cronbach alpha > 0.60) which means that the overall question items in the questionnaire are reliable.Based on the normality test using the P-P plot test graph on SPSS as shown in Figure 1, it can be seen that the research data is normally distributed.This is because the points on the P Plot follow a diagonal line.

Figure 1. P-P Plot
For the multicollinearity test, it can be seen that the data used in this study did not indicate that there were symptoms of multicollinearity.This is because the VIF value of all independent variables in this study is between 1-10 as shown in table 3.Meanwhile, for the Heteroscedasticity test, it can also be seen that all the data tested in this study were homoscedasticity (no heteroscedasticity).This is because based on the data pattern that is evenly distributed on the scatterplot as shown in Figure 2.This equation indicates that for every 1 increase in advertising activity, the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency increases by 0.180.Likewise, every increase in sales promotion activities causes an increase in the decision of tourists visiting Buleleng Regency to increase by 0.300.For every increase of 1 individual selling activity, the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency increases by 0.157.Furthermore, for every 1 increase in public relations activities, the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency increases by 0.234.Finally, every 1 increase in direct sales activities, the decision of tourists visiting Buleleng Regency increases by 0.106.
Based on the results of the t test (partial) and the F test (simultaneous) as shown in the table 4 below, it can be seen that the test results are as follows: Judging from the coefficients table above, it can be partially tested the results on the hypothesis as follows.1) Hypothesis Test 1.The results of the t-test of the influence of advertising on the decision to visit resulted in a significance value of 0.157 > 0.05.Thus, hypothesis 1 which states "Advertising affects the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency" is rejected.2) Hypothesis Test 2. The results of the t-test of the influence of sales promotion on the decision to visit resulted in a significance value of 0.001 <0.05.Thus, hypothesis 2 which states "Sales promotion affects the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency" is accepted.
3) Hypothesis Test 3. The results of the t test of the influence of individual sales on the decision to visit produce a significance value of 0.228 > 0.05.Thus, hypothesis 3 which states "Individual sales affect the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency" is rejected.4) Hypothesis Test 4.
The results of the t-test of the influence of public relations on visiting decisions produce a significance value of 0.063 > 0.05.Thus, hypothesis 4 which states "Community relations affect the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency" is rejected.Lastly 5) Hypothesis Test 5.The results of the t test of the effect of direct sales on the decision to visit resulted in a significance value of 0.377 > 0.05.Thus, hypothesis 5 which states "Direct sales affect the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency" is rejected.
Simultaneously the results of testing the independent variables on the dependent variable can be seen from the table 5 below: Judging from the ANOVA table above, it can be seen that the results of Hypothesis Testing 6.Where the results of the F test the influence of advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, public relations and direct sales on the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency resulted in a significance value of 0.000 <0.05.Thus, hypothesis 6 which states "Advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, public relations and direct selling have a simultaneous effect on the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency" is accepted.Judging from the value of the coefficient of determination (R2) in the summary model in table 6, it can be seen that 49.4% of tourist decisions to visit Buleleng Regency are influenced by advertising variables, sales promotions, personal sales, public relations and direct sales while 50.6%The decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency is influenced by other variables not examined in this study.Based on the results of the SPSS analysis test above, we can know that partially one independent variable, namely sales promotion, influences the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency, while the other four independent variables, namely advertising, personal selling, public relations and direct sales, do not affect the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency.Buleleng Regency.Sales promotions are known to influence tourists to visit Buleleng Regency, this condition is because they get invitations to tourist events and also voucher coupons intended for the company where they work so that they work while on vacation in Buleleng Regency.This is in accordance with the research conducted by (Shabrina & Dwijayanti, 2021) where they found that sales promotion had an effect on purchasing decisions in Surabaya.Unlike the case with advertising, advertising that has been carried out by tourism object managers so far, has no effect on a person's decision to visit Buleleng Regency because it is possible that the advertising content made is less attractive or the information received by someone is more about the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic., thus making a person afraid to make a tourist visit.These results are in line with the results of (Yunita & Rukmini, 2021) study which found that advertising had no effect on purchasing decisions.Similar results also occur in individual sales, where the independent variable of the promotion mix has no effect on a person's decision to make a tourist visit to Buleleng Regency.The absence of this influence may be due to the lack of incentive programs provided by the tourism bureau to tourists who want to visit Buleleng Regency, as well as the exposure from the local government about the uniqueness of tourist objects in Buleleng Regency so that most tourists do not know about it.This is in line with the results of (Oladepo & Abimbola, 2015) research which found that individual sales had no effect on a person's purchase decision in Lagon province, Nigeria.. Public relations have no effect on a person's decision to visit, because at least the tourism managers in Buleleng Regency provide information about activities and tourist attractions on their website, so many people do not know about the existence of tourist objects or tourist activities held in Buleleng Regency.Buleleng Regency.This condition is in line with the results of research by (Kartikarini et al., 2011) who found that public relations had no effect on purchasing decisions in the city of Surabaya.Finally, direct sales are known to have no effect on someone's decision to visit Buleleng Regency.This is possible because during the pandemic, tourist access to the island of Bali, especially Buleleng Regency, is tightened, so that tourism actors and managers rarely promote tourism activities during the pandemic, either through catalogs or contacting tourists personally, because they know that tourists will be difficult when entering the island.Bali.This condition is in line with the results of research from (Prasetiowati, 2013) which found direct sales had no effect on consumer purchasing decisions in Surakarta.In general, what causes most of the promotional mix variables do not affect the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency because tourism conditions are still affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, thus causing the implementation of strict rules for tourists who will come to the island of Bali.This causes most of the promotional efforts carried out by tourism actors and managers in North Bali to be in vain because tourists do not want and dare to come to Buleleng Regency.However, even so, there are still a small number of tourists who make tourist visits to Buleleng Regency, especially domestic tourists because they participate in several activities organized by the company or office where they work so that they benefit from the invitation to tourist events obtained from tourism managers in the Regency.Buleleng.This is also proven from the results of the simultaneous test where all the variables of the promotion mix have a significant effect on the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency.

Conclusions
Based on the results of the SPSS test and its discussion, it can be concluded that simultaneously all promotion mix variables have a significant effect on tourist decisions to visit Buleleng Regency, while partially only sales promotion variables have a positive and significant impact on tourists' decisions to visit Buleleng Regency, while the advertising variable , direct sales, public relations and individual sales have no significant effect on the decision of tourists to visit Buleleng Regency.Therefore, tourists visiting Buleleng Regency during the pandemic are due to sales promotions such as giving discounts, tourist voucher coupons, cultural contests and various tourism events in Buleleng Regency.
The advice that can be given to further researchers is to use other marketing mix variables besides the promotion mix such as price, location, service process, people, and service products provided to tourists to find out the marketing stimulus factors that can influence someone to make a tourist visit.As for the perpetrators and managers of tourism in Buleleng Regency to do more sales promotions such as invitations to attend tourism events typical of Buleleng Regency, carry out various cultural contests in Buleleng Regency while providing tourist vouchers or discounts for tourists who wish to stay while watching various contest events.cultural activities carried out by tourist actors in Buleleng Regency.In addition, with the current easing of the spread of the COVID-19 virus, it is hoped that the Buleleng Regency Government will intensify the provision of positive information about the condition of tourism and tourist attractions in Buleleng Regency, so as to attract foreign and domestic tourists to visit Buleleng Regency.

Table 1 .
. Number of Tourist Visits to the Island of Bali Period 2017 to 2021.

Table 2 .
Number of Tourist Visits to Buleleng Regency Period 2017 to 2021.