Virtual Reality in Destination Marketing: Telepresence, Social Presence, and Tourists’ Visit Intentions

Destination marketing organizations (DMOs) have widely adopted virtual reality (VR) commercials to highlight attractions for potential tourists and encourage visitation. This study extends the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model by incorporating telepresence and social presence as stimuli and elucidating these factors’ possible interplay in jointly shaping users’ cognition, affection, and (re)visit intentions. A 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment was conducted with a sample of 254 participants. Results showed that VR commercials with higher telepresence elicited stronger (re)visit intention, and this effect was mediated by cognition (i.e., education) and affection (i.e., entertainment, and esthetics). Such causal effects appeared stronger in contexts with lower levels of social presence. Findings offer valuable insight into the design of destination VR commercials.