<![CDATA[Tourism destinations require effective communication and digital capabilities to compete. This study investigates the causal relationships among integrated marketing communication, human resource competency, digital marketing utilization, and brand awareness destination within the tourism sector. Framed by the Resource-Based View (RBV), a quantitative, cross-sectional research design was adopted. Data were gathered from 360 purposively selected tourism stakeholders, including village tourism managers, village-owned enterprise officials, local tourism board representatives, and private service providers actively involved in digital marketing initiatives. Using a structured questionnaire, key constructs were measured with validated Likert-scale indicators and analyzed via Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings confirm that both integrated marketing communication and human resource competency have significant positive effects on digital marketing utilization, which, in turn, substantially influences brand awareness destination. Further analysis reveals that digital marketing utilization fully mediates the human resource competency-brand awareness destination relationship and partially mediates the integrated marketing communication-brand awareness destination link, underscoring its strategic function in bridging organizational capabilities and market-level brand awareness. This research extends the Resource-Based View by positioning digital marketing utilization as a resource activation mechanism and provides practical guidance for aligning integrated marketing communication, capacity-building, and digital execution to strengthen destination branding.]]>
