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After the pandemic, the demand for a rapid recovery of tourism has led to increased intense competition among destinations, posing a considerable challenge for tourism managers and destination marketers worldwide. This situation necessitates a constant seek for new, unique, and more attractive methods to promote tourism destinations. Virtual Reality (VR) emerges as a promising solution with the potential to significantly transform destination marketing activities. This article presents a dataset exploring the relationship between VR authentic experience, cognitive state, affirmative state, and behavioral visiting intentions of potential tourists experiencing VR at the destination of Danang, Vietnam. The dataset includes 359 survey samples collected from potential tourists in four major cities in Vietnam including Thanh Hoa, Vinh, Hanoi, and Phu Quoc. This dataset is crucial for providing insights into how VR experiences impact the visiting intentions of potential tourists towards a specific destination. The shared dataset aims to lay the foundation for future comparative research, expanding knowledge about the influence of VR experiences specifically and smart tourism technologies in general on tourists’ visiting intentions.

To achieve sustainable tourism, the tourism development authorities have used advanced technologies to promote destinations, attract visitors, and protect the environment. Accordingly, while the available research on tourism technologies indicates that virtual reality (VR) matters in the visit intention of potential tourists, the mechanism of their inner senses when experiencing VR technologies is overlooked. To fill in this void, this study develops a comprehensive conceptual model for investigating the influence of VR technological features on tourists' minds, and consequently, their destination visit intention. This study integrates the technology acceptance model, stimuli-organism-response model, and flow theory into a unified conceptual model for a comprehensive understanding of tourists' behavior. By focusing on tourists' decision-making and behavior processes, this study sheds new light on how VR stimuli (i.e., vividness and interactivity) could translate into tourists' attitudes and visiting intentions. This conceptual model is then tested and validated using structural equation modeling on survey data collected from 311 VR users after experiencing virtual tours designed for destinations in Vietnam. The findings indicate that virtual tours affect tourists' psychological well-being, which translates into visiting intention. Based on the results, this study emphasizes the role of VR as a powerful marketing tool to promote a destination. Furthermore, approaches to enhance the effectiveness of VR tours, particularly, for tourism developers, are proposed. This study thus contributes to the literature in the area of VR tourism, contributing both theoretical and practical knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]