E-Word of Mouth in Increasing the Number of Marine Tourism Visits to the Bintan Regency, Riau Islands

The Digital Era 4.0 brings enormous changes to people's social behavior, changing how consumers get information for tourism destinations. This change has shifted Word of Mouth (WOM) into an Electronic Word of Mouth (E-WOM) in searching for, selecting-purchasing and evaluating information of desired tourism destinations more quickly. This research is qualitative descriptive research through literature study, observation, and previous studies, which aims to understand in-depth whether E-WOM can affect the level of tourist visits to the Bintan Regency, Riau Islands through a social media platform. The results indicate an increase in intensity in visiting marine tourism destinations. Many photos and videos are uploaded by domestic and foreign tourists both on social media accounts managed by tourism communities and personal accounts owned by tourists. The presence of these communities has had a significant influence on the rapid development of Bintan tourism. From WOM marketing, we can describe it in one word, trust, both positive and negative. Keywords: E-WOM, Marine Tourism, social media.