From Embodied Cognition to Real-World Visit Intention: Destination Brand Meaning in Virtual Reality Tourism

Virtual reality (VR) is now shaping the way users interact, feel, and construct meaning with destinationsin the postpandemic context. Although multiple studies have focused on technical characteristicsor customer satisfaction, in-depth exploration of embodied experience, emotion, and symbolsin virtual tourism space remains limited. Thus, this study aims to explain how VR experiences aretransformed into brand meaning and real-world visit intentions through emotional, cognitive, andnarrative dimensions. To achieve the research aim, the qualitative research integrates three conceptualperspectives that include embodied cognition, presence and immersion, and destination brandmeaning. Data were created through semistructured interviews with 14 participants from diversedemographic backgrounds who had previously experienced the destination’s content by VR technology.The analytical strategy combined with framework analysis and narrative analysis enables theidentification of three themes that are tightly linked to others including embodied experience in VRtourism, presence and immersion with affective dynamics, and constructing destination brand meaningthrough VR. These three themes indicate that users form emotional, spatial, and symbolic connections,thereby transforming virtual experiences into real-world visit intentions. The progressionfrom embodied cognition to real-world visit intention is an etic analytical sequence constructed bythe researchers to organize participants’ accounts; it is not a causal or temporal chain demonstrated bythe data, and within their own narratives participants described these elements as intertwined ratherthan ordered. The study clarifies the role of embodied narrative experiences in terms of forming destinationbrand meaning in a VR tourism environment. The study further reconceptualizes “culturalhaptic absence” as the intersection of a physical sensory gap and a cultural–semiotic gap, clarifyinghow incomplete embodiment shapes destination brand meaning and converts into visit intention.Concurrently, it suggests practical implications for VR content designers and organizing destinationmarketing strategies to enhance emotional and symbolic connections with users. The research sampleis diverse regarding nationality, age, residential context, occupation, and XR/VR experience.