The world cultural heritage tourism industry faces many challenges after the COVID-19 epidemic. The factors’ relationship within cognition, affection, and intention under destination image still needs further discussion. Against this background, the destination image (tourists’ perception of a destination) of George Town, a world cultural heritage city in Malaysia, is studied. The traditional relationship among the three factors was examined from the cognitive, affective, and intentional dimensions, innovatively combined structured questionnaire survey, social media and spatial data, text, sentiment, factor, regression, and mediation analysis. The results showed that the main cognitive elements of history, landscape, cultural experience, and food attracted tourists. Tourists’ effective feedback on scenic spots was mainly positive, such as “good,”, “nice” and other expressions, consistent with the questionnaire results. The relationship between cognition, affection, and intention was empirically demonstrated, with affective image mediating. The research results can support future urban tourism planning and heritage protection in similar cases in China.