tourism experience meaning

What Is Experiential Tourism?

Metropolitan State University
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“Experiential tourism” has become a popular term for travel marketers, but it can mean different things to different people. For some, experiential travel means doing anything that falls outside of a standard sightseeing, museum-going itinerary. For others, it is defined by interactions with locals or by going to places that might not be considered tourist attractions at all.

The definitions might be different, but the goals of experiential travelers are usually similar: to immerse themselves in a way that leads to some sort of discovery, insight or inspiration. This travel philosophy is usually championed by fully independent travelers (those who travel without help from agents or guides), but tour companies and even non-profit organizations have embraced the trend, promising transformative experiences to people who buy their vacation packages or join their volun-tourism programs .

Is experiential tourism redefining travel or is it a fad that will eventually fade? If it is a lasting travel trend, how will it affect off-the-beaten-path destinations that usually do not see many mainstream tourists?

Leveling the field

For some places, the experiential travel trend could be a game-changer. Smaller destinations cannot hope to compete with tourism heavyweights when it comes to infrastructure, advertising budget and investment. They can, however, differentiate themselves by focusing on the unique experiences they offer.

Manitoba provides an example. The oft-forgotten Canadian province highlights how local tour companies and communities can use the experiential trend to gain an edge in the ultra-competitive travel marketplace. Travel Manitoba explains that small operators can “avoid unnecessary risks and major investments by shifting the opportunity focus from building more infrastructure to building the capacity of people who can tell your ‘story' and connect with the traveler.”

According to Manitoba’s tourism stakeholders, the “ingredients” of a successful experiential tourism strategy include hands-on activities and interactions with locals . They also highlight the need for guides to change their approach to guiding. The goal should be to facilitate tours so that tourists can make discoveries and gain insights on their own.

Can all smaller destinations benefit?

On paper, the Manitoba approach sounds like a great idea, but is it practical? Some conscientious travelers might choose a destination because they want to support such grassroots efforts, but most are, first and foremost, seeking experiences. If they want to succeed, these destinations have to deliver.

New Zealand’s tourism development in recent decades suggests that experiential tourism can indeed help off-the-radar places develop into mainstream destinations. Admittedly, this Southern Hemisphere country was able to take advantage of the buzz from the "Lord of the Rings" movies to help its tourism efforts. However, New Zealand has stuck with advertising campaigns that focus on adventure and culture rather than on attractions related to the popular films.

Adventure sports, culinary and wine tourism, and cultural excursions have led to a boom for New Zealand in both the U.S. and Asia Pacific markets. This has happened at a grassroots level, with more than nine out every 10 tour companies in the country having fewer than five employees. This means that even if people are there for the skiing or wine and nothing else, they will often be interacting directly with local people in a way that is more personal than in destinations with more traditional tourism infrastructure.

An emotional connection

Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island has, like Manitoba, published a list of ingredients, which they call “essentials,” necessary for a successful experiential tourism sector. Keywords like “hands on” and “authentic” are part of this document, but so is something else: “emotion.” In other words, the goal of travelers is to find experiences that allow them to feel a connection to a place rather than to just see it.

This is not a new idea. You often hear people express affection for major world cities like Paris, Hong Kong or New York without ever mentioning the Eiffel Tower, Victoria Peak or Times Square. Perhaps the real allure of experiential tourism is that it makes it acceptable to seek out this kind of emotional connection.

A win for sustainability

The issue of sustainability might be important to travelers, but it might not always be practical to travel in a sustainable way and to support the preservation of local culture and ecosystems. This is especially true in mainstream tourist destinations.

Experiential tourism, on the other hand, can make sustainability more practical when it comes to both culture and the environment.

How is this possible?

Uniqueness is one of the biggest assets that a place can have when it comes to experiential tourism. Ideally, tourists who are interested in this kind of travel would reward a destination for preserving its nature, culture, historic architecture and other aspects of their destination by spending their travel budget there.

Culinary tourism

Ulf Liljankoski / Flickr

One of the most popular forms of experiential travel is culinary tourism. This can involve visiting neighborhood restaurants or markets with a local guide, or it could be more in-depth and include cooking classes, wine tastings and even picking trips to farms or gardens. La Boqueria, a classic market in Barcelona, has been successful at offering cooking classes and other immersive experiences to people who would otherwise only come there to sightsee.

Food tourism is currently one of the most accessible forms of experiential travel. Tourists seem drawn to culinary experiences , proving that experiential travel can cross over into the mainstream. The foodie trend also shows that worries about the "McDonald's-ization" of the world are unfounded.

An authentic image

Andri Koolme / Flickr

Social media has played a part in the rise of culinary tourism. Whole social accounts are based on nothing but pictures of raw ingredients and beautifully plated dishes. This points to a larger trend that shows that, like it or not, social media is how people connect with and get inspired by like-minded travelers. What does this mean for experiential travel?

The “Instagram effect” is real, and marketing offices have started inviting photographers with large Instagram followings on press junkets. This has helped to redefine travel , with people wanting to have the same experiences as those they see on social media.

At a recent tourism event, the head of marketing for the Tourism Authority of Thailand, Chattan Kunjara na Ayudhya, pointed out that the process of taking images to post on social media can be beneficial for experiential travelers if the images are authentic. “An authentic image can tell a very complex story in a very simple way. These simple images are shared by travelers on a day to day basis.”

He went on the explain that destinations and tourism industry stakeholders should be responsible for presenting tourists with the opportunities to create such images. “We need to make sure that we are creating authentic experiences that are shareable."

Volunteer, see the world

Another aspect of experiential tourism involves immersing yourself in something that you are truly passionate about. This could be cooking, pottery or something more obscure, like the conservation of wild plants. Such nature-based immersive experiences are offered in Southern Oregon by the Wild River Coast Alliance , which organizes programs that support communities and ecology in the region.

For some, simply getting beyond the tourist trail and seeing the real culture of a destination is the ultimate example of experiential tourism. This has always been a popular option for youth travelers or so-called “gap-year” tourists. Tour packages offering such experiences often have an educational angle (studying abroad or participating in a language immersion program). Some involve homestays or volunteering on development projects while living abroad.

Understanding the place

Are tourists simply ticking experiences off their to-do list just as they’d tick off sightseeing sites, or are they actually gaining understanding of the places that they visit? The criticism of the experiential trend is that immersion experiences are, in general, just another way to package tourism. The trend may allow smaller destinations to capitalize on their unique attributes, but the travelers are still short-term visitors whose travel experiences are lacking .

Is it possible to be overzealous in this pursuit of experiences? In Luang Prabang, an historic city and UNESCO World Heritage Site in Laos, one tradition has become quite popular with tourists. The practice of donating food to feed the city’s monks occurs every morning. Local people congregate at the roadside and put food into the monks’ bowls as they walk past. Tourists began coming early in the morning to photograph the procession-like practice. Some even take part, raising concerns that this once quiet, solemn religious affair has descended into a noisy spectacle.

The Luang Prabang Airport reportedly has signs that offer advice on how to participate in the almsgiving in a respectful way.

The future of experiential tourism

The demand for air travel is expected to double in the next two decades. Tourism is growing at a steady rate. Despite criticisms and drawbacks, the growth of experiential tourism could allow smaller players in the tourism industry to benefit from this growth without having to sacrifice their culture, sell their land to developers or change the way that they live.

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What is experiential travel?

Experiential travel is the one of the latest trends in the travel and tourism industry. Increasing in popularity, this type of tourism is often viewed as ‘good’, frequently facilitating niche tourism or sustainable tourism endeavours. But what actually is experiential travel and what is it all about? Read on to find out….

Where did experiential travel come from?

Why is experiential travel on the rise, how is experiential travel marketed, examples of experiential travel , how to make your trip more experiential, why is experiential travel a good way to see the world, further reading.

Put simply, experiential travel is travel that focuses on experiences first. It is a world away from spending a week lying on a beach or around a pool – though of course there is nothing wrong with tourism like this, and it’s something we all need from time to time! Experiential travel is also known as immersion travel. This is because people ( tourists ) are fully immersing themselves in a particular culture or a certain place – whether that be a specific site or a general country.

When travelling in this way, tourists will actively seek out and engage in things that make the place what it is. This includes eating local food, learning about the history of a place, speaking to the people who live there and so on. Experiential travel is very often transformative for people.

Nobody particularly invented experiential travel. Since the dawn of time (almost…) people have been travelling from their hometown to another place, and taking the time to engage with and learn about that destination. However, the concept does have a name now. Experiential travel has been likened to the concept of experiential education (which I discuss in my article on educational tourism ), which was first discussed by John Dewey in his 1938 book Experience and Education .

Dewey was an educator and philosopher. Study.com says, “John Dewey is probably most famous for his role in what is called progressive education. Progressive education is essentially a view of education that emphasizes the need to learn by doing. Dewey believed that human beings learn through a ‘hands-on’ approach. This places Dewey in the educational philosophy of pragmatism .

Pragmatists believe that reality must be experienced. From Dewey’s educational point of view, this means that students must interact with their environment in order to adapt and learn. Dewey felt the same idea was true for teachers and that teachers and students must learn together. His view of the classroom was deeply rooted in democratic ideals, which promoted equal voice among all participants in the learning experience.”

So, experiential travel is a similar type of thing. It was first mentioned itself in 1985, in a book called Insights in Strategic Retail Management by John Gattorna . The concept was described as being “where the destination is not as important as the experience which can be had there”. And this is exactly what it is!

People are looking more and more towards ‘doing’ things while travelling, rather than spending time just switching off and relaxing. But why is this? There are many reasons, including wanting to gain new knowledge and also emulate experiences we may have seen in films, on TV and on social media or blogs. But overall, there is an evident movement by consumers away from the traditional sun, sea and sand holiday model towards more unusual and immersive forms of travel.

And people don’t just want to have an immersive experience, they want to share it with the world too! UK-based holiday home insurance provider Schofields ran a survey that showed that 40.1% of ‘millennials’ consider whether or not a place is Instagrammable as their top priority when choosing and booking holiday destinations. People like to post stories and images that make them stand out from the rest of the crowd. Be that their friends, fans or just general social media followers!

Especially following the pandemic, people are really looking to get out and *do something*. Adventures are good for the soul, a chance to make memories and really live. For many, it feels like there hasn’t been a lot of chance to live over the past couple of years. So heading to a new and exciting destination and trying new activities, meeting new people, tasting new foods… it’s invigorating!

Experiential travel is rarely given this title when it is being sold. It is repackaged and relabelled, often called ‘adventure travel’ or ‘experience travel’. Scott Dunn , a luxury travel brand, is one company that do market this type of travel as being experiential. They describe it as being ‘ immersive, adventurous and authentic. A journey that gets you beneath the skin of a culture to experience life as a local. That could mean thrifting with a fashion designer in Milan or dining with a food blogger in Cape Town. In a work hard, play hard world, we design trips that challenge your perspective to encourage you to rethink your relationship with people and places’.

Experience Travel Group , which offers experiential travel throughout destinations across Asia, describe it as ‘boutique holidays for curious travellers’. And travel group Exodus offer adventure holidays, which boils down to experiential travel. They say “there’s something about the feeling of visiting a new country, culture or environment – whether that’s a mountain range, desert or jungle – that just can’t be beaten”.

Anything that is marketed as an adventure will be a chance to try experiential travel. Essentially if you’re not lying on a sunbed drinking cocktails and perusing the buffet for 2 weeks, your trip is probably some kind of experiential travel… or at least it can be!

Inner Mongolia Itinerary. experiential travel

Because the term experiential travel is broad, it naturally encompasses many different types of tourism and holidays that come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. A tourist might achieve an immersive experience by staying in a homestay and getting to know the local people and culture or they might choose to donate their time by taking a volunteer tourism trip. Travelling to places that are off the beaten path, such as Inner Mongolia or the Chinese Silk Road can be a great way to ensure that you have an immersive experience too.

Other ways that tourists might choose to experience experiential travel might by climbing Mount Toubkal or diving in Dahab . They might do a road trip through Canada or take a city break to Shanghai. Visiting these places and taking these trips doesn’t entirely make your experience one of ‘experiential travel’, however. It’s all about getting under the surface. So when you’re away on a city break, you might take a cooking class or a food tour- choose this rather than just heading to the city’s most popular restaurants or ask for ‘off the beaten track’ recommendations from locals, from taxi drivers, from shop assistants etc.

Experiential travel is a about immersion. There are many, many ways that you can be immersed in the local culture and way of life! Here are a few examples:

Book a homestay or use a housesitting app – find out more about homestays here !
Take a walking tour led by a local
Book a cooking class making local dishes
Eat at independent restaurants
Join in with a community-improvement activity such as a beach clean up
Experience local entertainment like a gig, football game or theatre show
Speak to as many people as you can
Use local/independent taxi firms rather than Uber
Do some volunteer work
Stay in the destination for an extended length of time e.g. through slow tourism
Get off the beaten path

Experiential travel is so good for you. It helps broaden your horizons and teach you new things: you might learn a language, pick up some new recipes, learn the history of a culture you may not have even heard of before. It can change your perspective on things when you see the way other people live. A huge part of it is letting go of the stereotypes you might have (consciously or subconsciously) created in your mind about a community, a place, a certain group of people. Be willing to change your beliefs!

Experiential travel is also brilliant for local communities. Visiting a small, family-run restaurant rather than a chain, for example, ensures that your tourism dollars are benefiting real, local people and prevents economic leakage in tourism . This in turn helps to protect the culture we are absorbing on our travels. And visiting local communities, especially small tribes such as the Long Neck Tribe in Thailand , helps prevent globalisation and development in a way. By spending the time travelling to places to (respectfully) see and interact with these groups, tourists can help communities to achieve positive economic and social outcomes.

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Paper birch trees covered in snow on the ski slopes of Niseko in the Japanese island

Is experiential travel the next big trend?

The nature of travel is changing, with a stronger focus on immersive experiences. What does this mean for travellers?

Broadly speaking, the concept of experiential travel refers to immersive experiences — the kind that aims to forge a deeper connection with a destination than can usually be had from traditional leisure holidays. These often involve an element of adventure, whether physical, cultural or spiritual. According to trend-spotting agency Mabrian, these kinds of trips are now almost as high on the average traveller’s wish list as more conventional holidays — defined as involving activities such as sunbathing, family gatherings or shopping.

Where are people going?

Experiential travel usually delves deeper into a given destination, ensuring visitors can experience it as authentically as possible. As such, tours tend to focus on less-touristy spots. Since the pandemic, for example, upmarket ski specialist Powder Byrne has found that destinations like Japan better represent a blow-out family ski trip than somewhere such as Switzerland. Add-on experiences such as temple tours and samurai sword-fighting displays add extra dimension.

What kind of trips are being taken?

Active adventures are growing in popularity, with more extreme options on offer than ever before. An example includes the Shackleton Challenges. Launched to complement Shackleton’s polar-proof outdoor clothing, they’re — for the most part — Arctic and Antarctic mini-expeditions. Even the entry-level Polar Skills Challenge in Norway involves hauling a pulk (an equipment-laden sled) as you ski tour across the snow.

What about closer to home?

The growth of experiential travel isn’t restricted to long-haul pursuits. Take, for example, the popularity of wild camping in the UK. Of course, lovers of Britain’s national parks have been doing it for generations. But when a YouTuber such as Claire Wildbeare attracts an audience of 220,000 subscribers and posts 113 wild-camping and bivouacking videos — closely followed by fellow YouTube star Paul Messner — it’s clear something extraordinary is going on. Every weekend, it seems, a small army of thrill-seekers is dispersing across Britain’s moors, fells and munros. Their mission: to experience Britain in its rawest, most unvarnished state. As a result, mountain sports outfitter Ellis Brigham has seen its robust, weatherproof tents fly off the shelves. “It seems that enthusiasm for the adventurous side of camping is stronger than ever,” observes Luke Scrine, the brand’s chief tent buyer.

What if it’s not for me?

Of course, not everyone wants this kind of experience. People still fly and flop in their millions. And while some well-heeled travellers are hoping to come back with tales of life-changing encounters in faraway places, others are flocking to the next must-stay luxury hotel. HBO’s TV series White Lotus was cynical about such behaviour in 2021 and 2022, but that didn’t stop demand for the property featured in its second series — the Four Seasons Hotel in Taormina, Sicily — skyrocketing in the show’s wake.

What are the benefits?

The deeper we get into a destination, the more widely our money spreads. Original Travel’s Tom Barber is well aware of the benefits. “We’re big promoters of community-based tourism,” he says. “We identify locally owned accommodation, restaurants and activities so our clients can make informed decisions as to where their money goes. It’s important not to be preachy, but more and more clients are opting for experiences and accommodation where they know their money can be used to make a genuine difference.”

The benefits remain for the traveller, too. Spending time chatting to locals and getting to know about their day-to-day lives — including tour guides, hosts and others who work in tourism — could provide meaningful insight into the lived reality of a given destination. These kind of colloquial exchanges also contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of a place, which could prove just as memorable as a guide’s treasure trove of facts and history.

What do I need to know?

Travellers should check the exclusions on their travel insurance policy closely before they go, particularly if there are likely to be physical activities. There will also likely be a level of fitness required for some activities too — check you’re fully prepared before booking.

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Experiential Travel: Creating Memories, Not Checklists

Trends in the tourism industry are constantly evolving, and experiential travel is one of the latest trends that has only increased in popularity over the years. The key point of experiential travel is to create memories that will last you a lifetime, and if that sounds like exactly your type of travel, this guide will be helpful.

What exactly is experiential travel, why should you engage in it more often, and the top tour operators for experiential trips are just some of the key things covered in this detailed guide. Keep reading to learn more about experiential travel and see why so many people have become engrossed with it!

What Is Experiential Travel?

Experiential travel is a travel method that has been talked about for decades but has become increasingly popular over the last few years. It’s essentially a way of traveling that allows you to really dig deep into the local culture and fully experience every new place you visit.

Experiential tourism is mostly focused on experiences as opposed to destinations. It also entails spending more time with locals and exploring off-the-beaten paths, instead of just visiting tourist attractions with the highest ratings on Trip Advisor and Google Maps.

This type of tourism is also known as immersion travel because it entails travelers being fully immersed in a local culture. I like to think that immersion travel is just one aspect of experiential travel, and that adventure travel is just as an important part of it.

You can immerse yourself in a local culture all you want but if you don’t actually have authentic local experiences, I don’t think you can still call it experiential travel.

The complete opposite of experiential travel would be something like traveling to a foreign destination and staying at a resort the entire time you’re there. Sure, it’s nice to relax for a few days and spend your time sipping cocktails on the beach, but can you really say you’ve visited Mexico if you’ve never left the hotel? Experiential travelers would disagree.

Benefits of Experiential Travel

The main advantage of experiential travel is that you will end your trips feeling enriched by local cultures, and you will create memories that will last forever. You will actually get to learn and understand the history and traditions of a place, and if you do it right, you can make friends everywhere in the world.

Another benefit of experiential travel is that it should be more affordable. You wouldn’t stay in a fancy hotel, but rather in an apartment rented out by a local. You can even look into house-sitting and pet-sitting options, or just stick to couchsurfing for the most authentic experiences.

Choosing local accommodation instead of mass hotel chains allows you to get in touch with the hosts, which can provide valuable tips about the local communities and the destination’s culture.

Examples of Experiential Travel

When I plan a trip to a new country, I usually start off by creating a map on Google Maps with all the most famous landmarks, tourist attractions, and museums. I prefer to do things by myself and I avoid hiring guides and travel agents, so I do aim to achieve some level of immersion into local culture.

I also make it a point to eat at as many local restaurants as possible and try all the most famous foods in that city. The opposite would be sticking to Burger King or McDonald’s because they’re “safe” options.

While all of that is part of immersion travel, a true experiential traveler wouldn’t aim to visit just the most famous attractions in a new city. Instead, they would look for knowledgeable locals who would help them find all the best-hidden gems and places that locals enjoy the most. It could include visiting a quaint restaurant with the best local cuisine or partaking in an activity that is specific to that city.

It means joining a pasta-making class when you’re in Italy, partaking in a Flamenco dance class while you’re exploring Spain, or attending a local football game when you’re staying in England.

Planning an Experiential Travel Trip

When you’re planning an experiential travel trip, try to focus on encountering authentic local experiences. I would suggest starting off with a quick walking tour of the city. But try to look for local guides that do these tours in smaller groups – it will be a much more immersive experience and you’ll get to actually learn something, especially if you’re spending time with like-minded travelers.

Then, I suggest you do some research about the cuisine of the place you are visiting and learn about the different local dishes. Try to find restaurants that are frequented by locals – if you’re not having too much success, ask your host or a local guide for recommendations.

I’ve found that asking people on Reddit can also yield some great results because there are often locals who are willing to help tourists get to know their cultures.

Next, consider what the country or city you’re visiting is most famous for and try to find attractions or experiences that incorporate that to really get a sense of how the locals are living. An example of this would be going on at least one hike if you’re traveling in the more rural areas of Switzerland, or swimming in the Rhine River if you’re staying in Basel because it’s what the locals actually do.

Top Experiential Travel Companies

Velocity black.

Velocity Black is one of the best examples of a modern concierge service that goes above and beyond for its clients. Services offered by the company include organizing trips and holidays that are tailored to your wants and needs. Velocity Black can offer its members deals on flights with the world’s best airlines, free upgrades, and access to some of the best hotels in the world.

The company is also able to organize special experiences for its clients, which range from hanging out with celebrities to swimming with orcas. The annual membership fee is £2,000 and there’s currently a waiting list to join.

Vivid Travel

Vivid Travel is an experiential travel company that focuses on creating personalized travel itineraries for their customers. The agents will ask you questions about preferences for accommodation, ideas for experiences, and attractions, but also about your budget and preferred vacation length.

Then, they can create you a unique itinerary that explores all the things that interest you the most, while staying within your budget. They’ll do all the booking for you, and it’s a great company to use if you don’t like doing the research and bookings yourself.

Niquesa Travel

Niquesa Travel is another tour operator that specializes in custom travel itineraries. It’s more of a luxury travel company, so not the best operator to use if you’re trying to travel on a tighter budget. The company can plan and organize every aspect of your trip, from flights to immersive experiences.

You can contact Niquesa Travel to arrange any type of trip you want, and they also have a few pre-made itineraries that sound amazing. Travel to Morocco on a limited budget and follow a series of clues as you explore the local culture, or go on a road trip through England in a supercar.

Black Tomato

Black Tomato is a favored luxury travel company for experiential travel. This company has pre-made itineraries for virtually every corner of the world, but its agents can also create entirely new customized itineraries for customers.

Trekking in Nepal, safaris in Uganda, and sailing in the Galapagos Islands are just some examples of trips this company can arrange for you. Allowing Black Tomato to plan your trip means you’ll need to tell them everything about your preferences and budget, and they’ll do absolutely everything for you from booking the plane tickets to reserving you a spot in the pasta-making class in Tuscany.

Abercrombie & Kent

Abercrombie & Kent is one of the oldest luxury travel companies with a history of more than six decades. The company is known for incredibly detailed personalized itineraries, as well as excellent service.

Booking a trip with Abercrombie & Kent means that you could attend a private tour of a museum, get customized meals, and stay at places that are off-limits for regular people. This is one of the priciest tour agencies for experiential travel, but also one that can offer you a unique and personalized experience in every corner of the world.

Current Trends in Experiential Travel

Trends in the travel industry are constantly changing, but the core of experiential travel will always be immersive experiences. Adventure tourism is becoming an increasingly important part of experiential travel, and more and more travelers are spending their time hiking, backpacking, rafting, skydiving, and engaging in all sorts of other adventures that are typical for the places they are visiting.

Meaningful engagement with the local communities is also a growing trend in experiential travel. Forming an emotional connection with people in a foreign place is essential for creating lifelong memories, and an increasing number of people will spend their time visiting schools, museums, theaters, and similar places that the locals frequent in their daily lives.

But the way I see it, you should focus on experiences you’re genuinely interested in, and skip any experiences you might not enjoy, regardless of how local they are. An example of this would be if you were in London – maybe it would be a truly authentic local experience to spend an afternoon at a pub and go to a football match, but if that’s not something you would genuinely enjoy, you absolutely shouldn’t do it.

Instead, do something that’s fun for you – see a play at the Globe Theater, or spend an afternoon in the Natural History Museum, if that’s more up your alley.

The Future of Experiential Travel

Even with the rise of experiential travel among young adults, there is still absolutely a market for those who prefer to spend their vacation days lounging and relaxing. However, experiential travel has become extremely popular over the past few years, and it was in part a result of the global pandemic of 2020.

Most of the world was stuck for nearly a year, unable to leave their house properly, let alone travel to a new destination. When the countless restrictions were finely dropped and we were allowed to start traveling again, people wanted to get out of the house and do something.

The future of experiential travel lies in more personalized experiences and sustainability. More and more tour operators are shifting to offering immersive travel experiences to satisfy the growing demand for experiential trips. Also, the importance of AI is growing at the same time as the demand for experiential tours, and it’s hard to imagine a world in which the two don’t become integrated.

It’s expected that travel companies will turn to AI to help create unique and personalized itineraries and that VR will become a bit component of experiential travel. It’s only a matter of time until VR allows us to become fully immersed in destinations that we cannot physically visit, whether it’s a trip to Macchu Picchu from the comfort of your couch or a tour of ancient Rome.

About the Author Anna Timbrook

Anna is the co-owner of expert world travel and can't wait to share her travel experience with the world. With over 54 countries under her belt she has a lot to write about! Including those insane encounters with black bears in Canada.

Tourism Experience and Tourism Design

First Online: 05 October 2016

Cite this chapter

Jeongmi (Jamie) Kim 5 &
Daniel R. Fesenmaier 5

Part of the book series: Tourism on the Verge ((TV))

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This chapter argues that experiences are dynamic and emotional in nature and should be conceptualized as a series of ‘micro-events’ during the trip. Further, the advent of new sensor technology provides new tools for understanding the ways in which these experiences—events are perceived and the meanings created hold great promise in addressing a number of critical questions empowering the design of tourism places. We then describe traveler experiences through a series of case studies.

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Charting the Smart Tourism Landscape: A Comprehensive Framework for Revealing the Impact of Destination Smartness on Tourism Experience and Perceived Value

Smart Experiences in Tourism

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Kim, J.(., Fesenmaier, D.R. (2017). Tourism Experience and Tourism Design. In: Fesenmaier, D., Xiang, Z. (eds) Design Science in Tourism. Tourism on the Verge. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42773-7_2

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Experiential Travel Explained: Players, Distribution Landscape, and Opportunities

12 min read
Business , Travel
Published: 14 Jul, 2022
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Reality must be experienced.

In the last few years (and especially after the pandemic), travel trends have dramatically shifted and multiple studies prove it. For example, TripAdvisor's Travel in 2022 Report discovered that about three-quarters of travelers are willing to see new places with priorities such as having new experiences and learning about history and culture not far behind.

TripAdvisor‘s “Travel in 2022: A Look Ahead” Report

Nine out of ten Razorfish study respondents believe the most important keepsake from a trip is a story to tell about it, while 79 percent say that traveling isn’t about getting to a new place, it’s about how you grow as a result of the journey. Moreover, half of Gen Z respondents said they want to get out of their comfort zone and crave a sense of risk and excitement while traveling. Expedia even gave it a name. They called 2022 the year of GOAT – Greatest of All Trips – mindset. Their research shows that 40 percent of travelers dream about trying new food, 31 percent crave for local delicacies, and 23 percent look for off-the-beaten track experiences and destinations. Summing up, we can say that today’s travelers no longer want to spend their vacation hopping on and off the sightseeing bus on the packaged group tour or chilling lazily next to the pool with a cocktail at the all-inclusive hotel without ever leaving the premises (well, we’ll be honest, some still do). Instead of that flight-and-flop style, many vacationers are hungry for excitement, cultural immersion, and new experiences. Obviously, the travel industry has to keep up with customer demand, so today we explore what experiential tourism is about and how travel businesses can capitalize on this surging appetite for exclusivity and adventure.

What is experiential travel?

Experiential travel is a form of tourism that implies an active and meaningful engagement with a destination’s culture, people, and/or environment to create unique, memorable experiences. It’s the story about visiting new destinations, keeping off the beaten path, encountering authentic local experiences, and just doing something extraordinary. And we not only mean actual activities here. Sometimes even staying in an unusual lodging such as a glamping cabin or a treehouse can be an experience of a lifetime. Experiential travel is often confused with immersive and adventure travel (actually, Adventure Trade Travel Association or ATTA suggests adventure tourism as the main unifying term).

2022 ADVENTURE TRAVEL INDUSTRY SNAPSHOT by ATTA

However, we believe these concepts aren’t interchangeable. In fact, experiential travel can be seen as an umbrella for the other two. Here’s why. Immersive travel implies, well, immersing in the foreign culture which in most cases means mingling with the community at the place of destination, engaging in traditional activities, attending local events, and so on. It can be anything from booking a homestay instead of a hotel to volunteering at the nearby field to attending a weekend flea market or a local yoga class – you get the idea. Meanwhile, adventure travel is more about physical activities. It can be something safe (for the most part) and moderately active like camping or hiking – or more on a sports and even adrenaline-rush side, like skydiving, rafting, bungee jumping, mountain climbing, and so on.

How Adventure Travel Skyrocketed After Pandemic

Watch our beautiful video about the post-pandemic surge of adventure travel

So, as you can see, both of these groups are about getting vivid experiences, with the first one involving deep connection with the locals and getting to know the local culture, and the second one (that can even be done alone and in one’s own country) involving an active outdoor pastime. Now that we’re done with the basics, let’s talk about how businesses can actually help adventure-seeking travelers plan and organize the vacation of their dreams.

Experiential travel ecosystem: business models, distribution, technologies, and representatives

If you run or plan to launch a travel business and want to capitalize on the experiential tourism trend, here are options on how to fit in.

Experiential travel distribution

Local service suppliers: building the base of the pyramid

Local suppliers are the ones that create the initial travel products. As we said, experiential travel is tightly connected to either traditional, authentic practices that only locals can demonstrate or unique, out-of-the-mainstream services provided by specialized, niche businesses. Real-world examples. Basically, any entity that offers the tours and attractions (T&A) services can be placed in this category, be it an amusement park, a Bedouin renting out a camel, a ski resort, or a Chinese farmer demonstrating his rice field. Some of them can be called tour operators if what they do is showing tourists around or arranging guided tours of any kind (pub crawls, coffee tastings, mountain trekking – you name it). Inventory sourcing and distribution. Local suppliers don’t have to source inventory, but they distribute it to all other players including the end consumer. Technologies. Typically, small companies are poorly digitized or not digitized at all, so they manage their operations with spreadsheets and often use distributors’ extranets to create entries and update availability manually. Bigger businesses can adopt itinerary building software (e.g., TripCreator ), a channel manager (e.g., TripAdmit ), or even a focused, multi-featured tour operator platform (e.g., TrekkSoft ) that can assist with scheduling, multi-channel distribution, partner relationships, analytics, and so on.

Tour operators: providing turn-key services

Tour operators are travel companies that devise itineraries, create corresponding multi-component tour packages, sell them to travel agents or travelers, and make sure everything goes well from the start to the end of the trip, having full responsibility to the traveler. Most tour operators have something to offer to adventure lovers. Whether organized by the company itself or sourced from third-party suppliers, such experiential travel products find their place in the overall portfolio. Real-world examples. Tour operators are in a big category that includes a variety of businesses. There are large, well-known companies (like TUI or Jet2holidays ) that even operate their own airlines or hotel chains, so that they not only source inventory from external travel suppliers, but use their own as well. Also, there are niche tour operators that only focus on experiential travel (e.g., Intrepid Travel , Exodus , or Adventure.Travel ) or the ones that specialize on unique, tailor-made luxury tours crafted from scratch for every traveler (e.g., Abercrombie & Kent , Scott Dunn , Black Tomato , ETG , etc.). Besides, as we said, small local companies that sell just one or several local products like a guided tour, safari, cooking classes, or other local activities, join in as well.

Black Tomato’s Unique Experiences category

Inventory sourcing and distribution. Tour operators source inventory from local suppliers or create their own travel offerings. They distribute their products to OTAs, DMCs, or other operators, list them on marketplaces, or sell directly to travelers (in the office or via website). Technologies. Here, again, it all depends on the size and resources of the company. Small operators manage with spreadsheets, emails, and phone calls, while big players implement a full-blown, specialized system or even develop a custom solution to cover all the operational needs. Mid-sized operators often adopt standalone modules to streamline one or several business aspects such as

itinerary creation and scheduling (tour builders),
online booking ( booking engines ),
multi-channel distribution management (channel managers),
customer relationships (CRM systems),
content management (CMSs),
reporting and analytics ( BI tools ), and so on.

In addition, to facilitate and automate the B2B interaction, bigger companies often develop a suite of APIs to enable integration and share product details with their partners. In case you’re not familiar with the concept, watch our explainer on APIs in travel.

How travel systems talk to each other | Hotel Booking System | Travel APIs

Connectivity in the travel industry

Destination management companies: contracting local experiences

Destination management companies or DMCs are similar to tour operators in a sense that they also organize the travel itinerary, create packages, and usually work with multiple suppliers to make all the necessary arrangements. However, since DMCs usually operate from the said destination, they have a deeper knowledge of its specifics, regional potential, and local suppliers. They offer a wider scope of services, including airport transfers, vehicle rentals and other types of logistics support, hotel and restaurant bookings, tailored activities and workshops, themed corporate events, and much more. Having extensive knowledge of the destination’s touristic resources, DMCs can offer the most unusual experiences to those who want to stay off the beaten path and try something new and authentic. Real-world examples. There are global DMCs like JTB Group that operates 508 offices within 143 cities worldwide and local ones that specialize in just one region or country like SAT Mexico DMC . Inventory sourcing and distribution. To source inventory, DMCs work with tour operators and direct travel product suppliers big and small. They sometimes act as hotel wholesalers ( bed banks ), contracting allotments from local accommodation providers. Then they bundle inventory into packages and, just like tour operators, sell directly to the customers, partner with distributors, or work through marketplaces. Technologies. Since the line between tour operators and DMCs is very blurry and their operational models are so similar, the list of software that can come in handy is the same. Though some vendors have solutions tailored specifically to the needs of DMCs (e.g., eTOS ).

Focused T&A marketplaces: aggregating offerings for every taste

Tours and attractions (T&A) marketplaces do not create, conduct, or buy tours for reselling. They only connect suppliers with consumers and distributors and earn their commission if the tour is booked. Here’s how it works. Tour operators list their products on the marketplace platform, increasing their customer reach. The marketplaces often offer expert coaching to their suppliers (e.g., on marketing or technology), as well as payment processing services and analytics tools. On the other side, travel agents (or other resellers like travel bloggers) partner with marketplaces to earn commissions on the bookings made through affiliate links/widgets located on their own websites, social media, blogs, or other digital platforms. Typically, they also can enjoy the support team’s patronage and access to useful tips, analytics, and other handy perks that depend on the platform.

Travel Experiences: How Viator, GetYourGuide, Peek, and Others Change Tours and Attractions Industry

Check our video about how T&A marketplaces emerged and evolved

Real-world examples. Viator , owned by TripAdvisor, is the largest T&A marketplace. When searching for a destination, travelers can see different categories of activities, with Eco Tours, Nature and Wildlife Tours, and Outdoor Activities being some of the options.

Viator’s activity categories

GetYourGuide , one of Viator's main competitors, also has a Nature and Adventure category for active travelers. Those who prefer other experiences like cultural immersion will have to browse through alternative activity types like Workshops and classes, Other experiences, or Guided tours. Inventory sourcing and distribution. T&A marketplaces usually work with direct suppliers and tour operators/DMCs, offering extranet interfaces to manage listings. Inventory is either sold directly to travelers or through resellers like OTAs and affiliate partners. As we said, travel bloggers or eCommerce sites can place affiliate links, banners, or widgets on their platforms and earn commissions on bookings. Big marketplaces support a more complex integration and offer a set of APIs that allow distributors to connect and source all product information automatically. Then, depending on the partnership mode, resellers can either enable booking via their own platform or redirect to the marketplace for reservation and payment processing. Technologies. There are specialized marketplace builders (like Sharetribe ) that help develop such platforms. Their features include powerful search capabilities, transaction and content management, a booking engine, extranet for suppliers, communication channels, plus a set of business and pricing rules to handle different types of workflows. But of course, big players build their own custom solutions from scratch.

Travel agencies: complementing portfolio with T&A

When we say travel agencies, in most cases we mean online travel agencies or OTAs. Those are websites that sell all sorts of travel products, separately or packaged in bundles. Real-world examples. If you look at the biggest players like Booking.com , Expedia , or Airbnb , you’ll see that all of them have a T&A section of some kind with subcategories that help filter propositions at a specific destination. This way, OTAs cater to those travelers who do the research and planning themselves and want to find out what they can experience during the trip.

Expedia T&A offerings

Inventory sourcing and distribution. Basically, an OTA business model is similar to that of a marketplace, but the range of products they deal with is much wider. They are the main retailers in the travel market and their inventory comes from all possible sources: direct suppliers, wholesalers, marketplaces, or bigger OTAs. Then it’s resold on a markup or commission basis via their own websites. Technologies. Well-digitized OTAs have three main tech components:

the front side which is their website or traveler app;
the back side where the booking engine, databases, accounting, and other internal systems function; and
the provider side which regulates connections to suppliers.

Consider reading our article about an OTA’s back office to learn about their tech infrastructure in detail or watch a short video explainer by our travel expert.

How Back Office Works in Online Travel Agency

Back office in OTAs explained

Travel app developers: suggesting a focused solution

Travel apps provide a distinct way of assisting independent travelers. Today, the world functions on smartphones; so, if you do it right, your product will definitely find its fans (be sure to check our tips on how to make a smashing T&A mobile app ). Such apps typically do not sell anything, but they help with the search, provide information, and redirect to the provider page for booking (if relevant). So, to get your potential customers the information they want, you’ll have to connect to data providers and experts in the area, depending on what you want to focus on. For example, any navigation app would need mapping data, so you’ll probably have to connect to, say, Google Maps or OSM , while if you want to add reviews to places you highlight, look at Yelp as a source. For inspiration, check out some of the popular apps.

AllTrails is a beautiful navigation app for hikers, runners, or bikers.
Couchsurfing is a well-known platform to request homestays and interact with locals all over the world.
Campspot helps find and book campgrounds.
Workaway , Woldpackers , or WWOOF connect those who need assistance with volunteers who are willing to help (and get to know the culture from inside).
eBird introduces you to the world of birding and our feathered friends, and so on.

the AllTrails app Planning feature

Besides such focused platforms, there are a lot of travel guides and assistants that help you find interesting places and unusual activities wherever you go (though more often than not, these are the apps developed by OTAs or marketplaces), e.g., Like a Local , Yelp , Atlas Obscura , etc. If you want to develop your own app, the sky's the limit regarding ideas. Maybe you’ll fashion a platform for treasure hunters, or a brand new travelers social network with an AI-powered speech translator to facilitate communication, or maybe collect information about all the cooking classes or Buddhist retreats in the world – who knows?

What to consider when starting an experiential travel business

Whether you already have a travel business and want to supplement your portfolio with experiential tourism offerings or are thinking about entering the market, we have a few tips for you to keep in mind.

Inventory management and integrations

If you plan to source travel products from third-party suppliers, carefully compare their terms, conditions, pricing models, services, and integration options. Connecting via APIs is always a great way to avoid manual mistakes and have the most up-to-date information. However, be aware that your most authentic products might come from local suppliers who are the least digitized.

Distribution

Balancing your distribution channels and finding an optimal mix is of the same importance as choosing suppliers. Partner with resellers and advertise on marketplaces; create a network of affiliates and cooperate with in-destination merchants like tourist information deals and hotels; consider adopting a channel manager and a point-of-sale software to sync availability and boost personal sales. However, if you want to create a high-end brand image, you’ll have to be more selective and use carefully chosen channels to create exclusive offers for your target customer group.

Your advertising and promotional strategy can be a real gamechanger. Research the market to find your target customers, where to reach them, and ways to attract them. Work on SEO, connect to customers on social media, promote your company on review and local information websites. Visit our separate posts on marketing and personalization in travel to learn more on how to draw people’s attention.

Online and mobile presence

Creating a robust website with an intuitive user flow and an easy-to-use mobile app is a must in today’s digital world. Remember about localization aspects, consider offering inbuilt communication channels like chatbots , and be careful when choosing a payment gateway provider (if you enable booking).

Sustainability strategy

Today, experiential travel and sustainable , or green travel are among the top trends (alongside concern about health and safety procedures and demand for contactless experience). And as studies show, they not only coexist but also correlate as most adventure-seeking travelers are also concerned about environmental and climate issues.

FREQUENT TRAVELERS, CLIMATE AND WHAT TO DO: TRAVELERS SHARE THEIR THOUGHTS study by ATTA

Experiential travel benefits local communities . Another reason these two trends are closely interconnected is that experiential travel heavily engages local communities in touristic activities. That brings along direct social benefits – from immediate income generation to overall infrastructure development – which is one of the main aspects of sustainable travel. Besides, getting to know the local culture helps increase awareness and preserve the traditions and authenticity of the destination community. A 2022 Booking.com Sustainable Travel Report reveals that sustainability is important to 81 percent of travelers. The same report shows that 66 percent want to have authentic experiences that are representative of the local culture away from popular tourist attractions with 45 percent believing that protecting and learning about local cultures is part of sustainable travel. Sadly though, around 40 percent of respondents indicated that they don't know how or where to find activities or tours that ensure they are actually having a positive impact and giving back to the local community. Adventure travel is an alternative to high-emission flights . In addition to that, environment-friendly adventure travel offers a great alternative to taking distant flights or bus tours that generate harmful emissions, so the increased share of such kinds of tourism can also help reduce the negative impact of the travel industry. What can travel companies do? Being aware about the importance of green initiatives for adventure-seeking travelers, what can you as a travel company do to be in line with today’s trends? Here are some ideas.

Get certification -- some industry-recognized certifications that verify high social and environmental performance, compliance with standards, and commitment to sustainable business practices are Travelife , GSTC , or B Corp .
Offset emissions -- carbon offsetting compensates for your harmful impact by investing in emission reduction projects such as reforestation, biofuel usage, and so on.
Adjust itineraries and travel products -- by choosing more environment-friendly accommodation options, transportation, and suppliers.
Fundraise for communities at your destinations.
Finance research.
Educate your partners and customers to work and travel responsibly.

Also remember to not only commit and contribute to social, economic, and environmental improvement, but also promote your efforts and showcase results – to attract like-minded travelers.

Understanding millennials’ tourism experience: values and meaning to travel as a key for identifying target clusters for youth (sustainable) tourism

Journal of Tourism Futures

ISSN : 2055-5911

Article publication date: 26 February 2018

Issue publication date: 4 June 2018

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the tourism experience of millennials by connecting their value orientations to the meaning that they give to travel. In doing so, it also aims at discovering profiles of young tourists that can be targeted both now and in the future by tourism organisations.

Design/methodology/approach

A survey based on validated scales reached 423 Dutch millennials. An integrated multidimensional research strategy has been applied where models that reduce the gathered data to fewer components (principal component analyses) were followed by a cluster analysis.

Ten value orientations (Schwartz, 1994) and four travel meanings have been identified. By combining these ten value orientations and four meanings, nine clusters have been identified representing groups of millennial tourists with different needs. For example, while two clusters fit into the popular description of young travellers seeking only unpretentious enjoyment, millennials represented in two other clusters are strongly motivated by self-transcending values, distance themselves from the travel meaning escapism and relaxation and will therefore not positively respond to a merely hedonic travel offer.

Research limitations/implications

Replication of this research is recommended in other national contexts, possibly using a longitudinal approach.

Practical implications

The nine clusters should be approached with a dedicated travel offer. In particular, at least two clusters of millennials may be successfully approached with a sustainable tourism offer.

Originality/value

The combination of value orientations and travel meanings portrays a detailed and realistic picture of the tourism experience looked for by millennials.

Youth tourism

Market segmentation
Sustainable tourism
Meaning to travel

Value orientations

Cavagnaro, E. , Staffieri, S. and Postma, A. (2018), "Understanding millennials’ tourism experience: values and meaning to travel as a key for identifying target clusters for youth (sustainable) tourism", Journal of Tourism Futures , Vol. 4 No. 1, pp. 31-42. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTF-12-2017-0058

Emerald Publishing Limited

© Elena Cavagnaro, Simona Staffieri and Albert Postma. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

This study aims at better understanding the tourism experience of millennials by connecting their value orientations to the meaning that they give to travel. In doing so, it also aims at discovering profiles of young tourists that can be targeted both now and in the future by tourism organisations.

Young tourists are key for tourism’s future at least for three reasons: the sheer amount on young tourists travelling in the present ( Richards, 2006 ; United Nations World Tourism Organisation and World Youth Student & Educational Travel Confederation (UNWTO and WYSE Travel Confederation, 2016 ); the fact that their original choices may lead to new attitudes towards tourism by the wider society ( Fermani et al. , 2011 ; Leask et al. , 2013 ) and the anticipation that young tourists will continue to travel in the future (Barton et al. , 2013). This last point is of particular importance form a future perspective because the young generation will move up in the demographic pyramid and take in the future the place that is now occupied by older generations, such as Baby Boomers. Today young generation (the so-called GY, GX and millennial generation) have different needs than their parents or grandparents in general ( Howe and Strauss, 2000 ) and in the context of tourism in particular ( Glover, 2010 ). Consequently, the middle-aged tourist in the 2020s and 2030s will, just like the young tourists of today, have different needs and wants compared to the contemporary middle-aged tourist. To be prepared for the future, the tourism sector has to understand and cater for these changing needs.

Catering for changing needs is an essential but not a sufficient measure to guarantee the future of tourism. It has in fact been stated that tourism will have no future unless it becomes sustainable ( United Nations World Tourism Organisation, 2013 ). In this context, previous studies have shown that young tourists with a specific (i.e. biospheric) value orientation associate travel with being in contact with nature ( Cavagnaro and Staffieri, 2015 ). From a future perspective, this is interesting because biospheric values are the most stable antecedent of sustainable behaviour ( Steg and Vlek, 2009 ). However, the salience to young tourists of different value orientations has not yet been explored. It may therefore be possible that, when contrasted with other value orientations, the biospheric value orientation is revealed to be less relevant to young tourists.

Therefore, as briefly stated above, the study’s purpose is twofold: to describe the value orientations of young tourists and to discover profiles of young tourists that can be targeted both now and in the future by connecting value orientations and meaning given to travel. Values are rather stable determinants of behaviour, thus offering an insight not only in present but also in future choices, while meaning expresses the general connotation that a person gives to travelling. The link between values and consumer choices is a strong one. This is even truer in those cases, such as tourism, where consumer choices are loaded with a significant symbolic reference.

Data were collected in the Netherlands, one of the European countries with the highest tourism participation ( Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, CBS, 2016 ) and the country where not only two of the authors but also the organisation specialized in market research that helped reach a representative sample, TNS Nipo, is located. A total of 423 youngsters answered a survey on values and the meaning they attribute to travelling based on validated scales. To analyse the data, an integrated multidimensional research strategy has been applied where models that reduce the gathered data to fewer components (principal component analyses (PCA)) were followed by a cluster analysis.

The paper is structured as follows. The theoretical and methodological section critically reviews the major theories on which this study is based, and offers insights on how the study was conducted. After this section, the findings are presented and discussed. The paper concludes by pointing at the professional and theoretical implication of the results.

Theoretical and methodological section

This section highlights the main theories on which the study is based and the method used to gather and analyse data. It is organised in four subsections. The first three critically discuss from a future perspective theories on youth tourism; on tourism experience and travel meaning; and on value orientations. The fourth and last one is dedicated to the research method.

Tourism research has begun to focus relatively late on young travellers in general and in particular on those born between 1980 and 2000, the so-called “Millennial” Generation ( Richards and Wilson, 2004 ; Glover, 2010 ; Pendergast et al. , 2010 ). Youth tourism is defined as all independent trips for periods of less than one year by people aged 16-29 which are motivated, in part or in full, by a desire to experience other cultures, build life experience and/or benefit from formal and informal learning opportunities outside one’s usual environment ( UNWTO and WYSE Travel Confederation, 2008 ). Currently (2017), the age group in this definition matches the generation of millennials. The millennial generation is, according to most definitions, born between 1980 and 2000. Generation Y (born between 1980-1994) and Generation Z (born between 1994-to date) include the millennial generation (born from the late 1980s onwards). They can all be considered youth travellers and their travel experience can therefore be interpreted building upon literature on youth tourism. The United Nations World Tourism Organisation and World Youth Student & Educational Travel Confederation state that Generation Z comprises about 30 per cent of the world population and counts 29 million international travellers around the world. It also regards Generation Z as millenials on steroids and refers to them as “the-internet-in-its-pocket-generation”, a feature that set them apart from previous generations such as the Baby Boomers and even the a bit older Generation Y who was born and grew up before the internet was widely available ( WYSE, 2016 ).

Notwithstanding an increasing interest in the millennial generation, existing research on youth tourism is relatively underdeveloped ( Richards and Wilson, 2004 ; Staffieri, 2016a ). This is surprising because young tourists have a substantial material and immaterial impact on the present and future of tourism. First, they represent an increasingly significant economic force: in 2015, almost one in four (23 per cent) tourists were aged 16-29; one in three hotel guests were millennial while the total value of international youth tourism is estimated to reach US$400 billion in 2020 – twice the value of 2009 ( UNWTO and WYSE Travel Confederation, 2016 ). Second, compared to older generations, youngsters are more resilient: they tend to keep visiting destinations that are under socio-political or environmental stress ( UNWTO and WYSE Travel Confederation, 2016 ). Young tourists tend, third, to skip on travel and accommodation costs to spend more on the destination. Richards (2011) found that on a major trip young people spend on average of US$2,600, which is almost three times more than an average tourist. Millennials, therefore, represent a major economic opportunity in general and for economically and politically fragile regions in particular.

From a socio-cultural perspective, it has been observed that young people are an innovative force and that their choices may lead to new approaches to tourism by the wider society ( Martinengo and Savoja, 1993 ; Fermani et al. , 2011 ; Cavagnaro and Staffieri, 2015 ). Therefore, changes and developments in tourism behaviour can be foreseen by describing the present travel behaviour of millennials ( Leask et al. , 2013 ).

Millennials, though, are not only relevant for their present impact on tourism, they are also the tourists of the future ( Richards and Wilson, 2004 ; UNWTO and WYSE Travel Confederation, 2008 ; Pendergast et al. , 2010 ). Millennials are depicted as natural travellers: over 60 per cent of them see travel as an important part of their lives, make 4-5 trips per year and are expected to keep looking for tourism experiences also when older ( Ovolo Hotels, 2013 ; Barton et al. , 2013 ). Gradually millennials move upward through the population pyramids replacing the older generation. If the tourism sector wants to prepare for the future by designing future proof products and services, it has to take this generational change into account. The middle-aged tourist in the 2020s and 2030s will, just like the youth tourist of today, have completely different needs, wants and travel behaviour than the contemporary middle-aged tourist.

All these considerations point to the importance of investigating this target group and identifying antecedents of their tourism behaviour, such as values and the meaning they give to a tourism experience.

Tourism experience and meaning to travel

Leisure has been conceptualised as an experience already in the early 1970s while the first academic article on the tourism experience dates from 1996 ( Ritchie and Hudson, 2009 ). The emotional implications of travelling have strengthened the conceptualization of tourism in terms of experience ( Pearce and Lee, 2005 ). When interpreting youth tourism, the conceptualization of tourism as an experience is even more important because young travellers reject standard or homogenised products and look for new solutions, ideas, and emotions or, in one word, new experiences ( UNWTO and WYSE Travel Confederation, 2008 ; Moisă, 2010 ). This notwithstanding there is still a lack of proper research on how to measure the (youth) tourism experience ( Ritchie and Hudson, 2009 ; Kim et al. , 2012 ).

The tourism experience consists of three main components: the need to travel, the consummation of the experience itself and its evaluation. The need to travel, in its turn, falls apart in two components: meaning given to and motivation to travel ( Staffieri, 2016a ). While the motivation ignites the decision-making process leading to a specific travel experience ( Chang, 2007 ), the meaning given to travel brings to the surface the general needs associated with travelling and is heavily related with the symbolic character of travelling ( Staffieri, 2016a ). Already in 1976, MacCannell argued that analogously to the religious symbolism of primitive people, tourist attractions express what is considered to be of value in modern society. From the sociological perspective adopted by MacCannell and other researchers on tourism after him, it follows that to understand the travel experience one must consider both the individual and the social frame of reference of the traveller. In other words, the way in which a tourist frames his or her experience depends not only from the individual characteristics of the traveller but also from the social structure in which he stems from and the network of interactions that he has established with others ( Blumer, 1969 , Staffieri, 2016b ). The meaning given to travel is such a frame and, being generated through interaction with others, it is recognisable by all individuals who contributed to its development and, when discovered, has therefore a valence that outweighs the individual sphere ( Staffieri, 2016a ).

Previous studies on millennials state that travel means to them novelty: the possibility to evade the quotidian, to try a different lifestyle, to live new experiences, to visit new places and to acquire new knowledge ( UNWTO and WYSE Travel Confederation, 2016 ). From this perspective, travelling means living an experience of personal development centred on the individual tourist. Yet, considering the reflections above on the collective way meaning is constructed, the youth tourism experience should also be framed with reference to collective symbols recognisable by the traveller’s peer-group ( Staffieri, 2016a ). From this perspective, the meaning given to travel transcends the individual need for novelty and embraces the need to partake in social trends, to socialise with friends and other (local) people, and to be in contact with nature ( Cavagnaro and Staffieri, 2015 ). The self-trascendend nature of meaning is confirmed by studies pointing that the youth traveller travel with a purpose, wants to live like the locals and believes in making a difference in the world ( UNWTO and WYSE Travel Confederation, 2016 ). Moreover, lately, a shift has occurred from providing experiences to providing an experience that contribute to the quality of life of the traveller. In this respect, the United Nations speak of the leap “from marketing to mattering” ( United Nation Global Compact and Accenture, 2014 ). Concluding, in order to design travel experiences that make a meaningful contribution to the quality of life of the traveller, it is important to understand his/her travel needs, including the meaning given to travel, and his/her core values.

Values are defined as “desirable transsituational goals varying in importance, which serve as a guiding principle in the life of a person or other social entity” ( Schwartz, 1994 , p. 21) and are considered to be rather stable antecedents of behaviour ( Stern et al. , 1995 ).

Schwartz (1994) found evidence for a general value system in which 56 values are plotted on two axes, one representing openness to change vs conservatism, and the other representing self-enhancement values (reflecting a concern with a person’s own interest) vs self-transcendence values (reflecting a concern with collective interests). By clustering values, Schwartz individuated ten value types or value orientations (see Table I ). Though Schwartz noticed that respondents failed to see the difference of adjoining value orientations (such as for example hedonism and stimulation), he concluded that they are able to discriminate among these ten value types ( Schwartz, 1994 , p. 32). This is important because, as Schwartz (1994 , p. 23) notices “the pursuit of each type of values have psychological, practical, and social consequences that may conflict or may be compatible with the pursuit of other value types”. For example, from a tourism perspective, people who are strongly motivated by hedonic values will choose a different tourism experience than people motivated by universalism ( Cavagnaro and Staffieri, 2015 ).

The distinction between self-enhancement and self-transcendent values has been widely used to explain pro-environmental beliefs, attitudes and intentions. Self-enhancement values that have been proved to have (mostly a negative) impact on pro-environmental choices are social power, wealth, authority, influence and ambition (these values are in italic in Table I ). This set of value has been labelled as “egoistic” ( Stern and Dietz, 1994 ; De Groot and Steg, 2008 ). It has also been argued that two types of self-transcendent values can be distinguished: altruistic (underlined in Table I ) and biospheric values (underlined and in italic in Table I ). While altruistic values reflect care and concern for other human beings, biospheric values reveal a concern for nature for its own sake, without a direct reference to the welfare of human beings ( Stern and Dietz, 1994 ; De Groot and Steg, 2008 ). Recently ( Steg et al. , 2012 ), hedonic values have been added as a fourth value orientation relevant for explaining sustainable beliefs, attitudes and behaviour. Hedonic values are strongly linked to a leisurely experience such as travelling ( Kim et al. , 2012 ), and are therefore of particular interest when studying a tourism experience. Hedonic values are in bold in Table I .

Research method

In 2014, the European Tourism Futures Institute (ETFI) initiated a large-scale study among youth in the Netherlands. The study was conducted in co-operation with the Academy of International Hospitality Research (AIHR) and TNS Nipo, a Dutch organisation specialized in market research. The Netherlands was chosen not only because it is the country where TNS Nipo, AIHR and the ETFI are located but also because with 82.2 per cent of the population older than 15 years going at least once a year on vacation, it is one of the European countries with the highest tourism participation grade ( CBS, 2016 ). Together these parties designed a computer-assisted web interviewing [1] survey to gather data on youngster values and the meaning they give to travel. Value orientations were measured using a nine-point Likert scale ranging from “opposed to my principles” to “extremely important in my life” ( Schwartz, 1994 ). To the values individuated by Schwartz, three values were added from recent research ( Steg et al. , 2012 ), i.e. specifically two biospheric (protecting the environment and preventing pollution) and one hedonic (gratification for oneself), bringing the total to 59 considered values. Travel meaning was measured using a five-point Likert scale validated by Staffieri (2016a) . The scales’ internal consistency has been verified trough Cronbach’s α . The unidimensionality of the value orientations was verified using four PCA [2] (see Table II ).

An integrated multidimensional research strategy was applied: multivariate analyses (PCA and cluster analysis) were used to reduce the measured items into fewer components and to uncover segments of young travellers that may be targeted with different tourism offers, including a sustainable tourism offer. Cluster analyses are an appropriate statistical technique for sociological research aimed at individuating and describing variations in the target group under scrutiny, in the present case young tourists. In this study, therefore, the cluster analysis starts from the values orientations and the components for travel meaning identified through PCA. To the factor scores obtained via the PCA a non-hierarchical cluster analysis, k-means method, has been applied ( Mac Queen, 1967 ; Spath, 1980 ; Everitt, Landau and Leese, 2001 ), using the statistical software SPSS ( Norusis, 2011 ). The k-means method is a useful tool for the segmentation of consumers ( Zani and Cerioli, 2007 ).

Findings and discussion

A total of 423 questionnaires were received. Respondents’ age ranges between 19 and 31 years, in line with the definition of millennial generation and youth tourism presented above. The sample is equally distributed between men and women. 61.1 per cent of respondents had travelled independently, i.e. without an accompanying family member or other tutor ( UNWTO and WYSE Travel Confederation, 2008 ). In line with findings from Ovolo Hotels (2013) , on average, respondents visited 4.6 countries.

In line with Schwartz’s 1994 study, ten value orientations have ben found (see Table II ). It is important to notice that for the value orientations, universalism and benevolence, the PCA individuated two components, of which the second one was composed respectively, of two and one value, and explained a low variance, respectively, 11.6 and 11.3. Due to their low explanatory value, these second components are not further considered.

The 19 items measuring travel meaning can be reduced to four components. These have been labelled: personal, inner development; development through interpersonal exchange; socializing and entertainment; and Escapism and relaxation (see Table III , where the order of the items in the table corresponds to their contribution to the new component). The first component includes items that relate to the meaning of travel as an experience of personal development and growth pointed at by the literature such as “I travel to improve physical/mental health” and “I travel to explore a meaningful path of life” ( Staffieri, 2016a ; UNWTO and WYSE Travel Confederation, 2016 ). The second component ties together items where experiencing new cultures and people is central. This is in line with literature pointing to the symbolic nature of travelling and the social construction of its meaning ( MacCannell, 1976 ; UNWTO and WYSE Travel Confederation, 2016 ). The third component is formed by items where the social nature of travelling is connected to hedonic experiences, such as diving into the night life of the destination. It reminds that travelling is a hedonic experience ( Kim et al. , 2012 ). In the fourth and last component, travelling has a hedonic flavour, too. Differently from the third component, though, the experience seems more personal, less connected with other people. Friends appear here only as a possible source of tensions that has to be avoided. In short, the four components of meaning found in this study confirm that travelling may take both a social and an individual meaning for youngsters ( UNWTO and WYSE Travel Confederation, 2008 , 2016), that travel is sought after as a pleasurable endeavour ( Kim et al. , 2012 ) and that having fun with friends and socialising are important needs of young travellers (United Nations World Tourism Organization, and World Youth Student & Educational Travel Confederation, UNWTO and WYSE Travel Confederation, 2011 ).

Following an integrated multidimensional research strategy, as illustrated above, a cluster analysis was then applied to the value orientations and meaning given to ravel found through PCAs. Cluster analysis started from two groups and gradually increased the number until ten ( Table IV ). A solution with nine groups shows the best goodness of fit ( R 2 =52.7 per cent) and is therefore considered as the most effective synthesis of the phenomenon under study ( Zani and Cerioli, 2007 ).

ANOVA shows that the value orientations benevolence ( R 2 =0.703), conformity ( R 2 =0.696), security ( R 2 =0.672) and self-direction ( R 2 =0.647) have a greater capability to discriminate among the nine clusters than the other six value orientations. For the meaning associated with travel, this role is played by two out of the four meanings: “Development through interpersonal exchange” ( R 2 =0.385) and “Escapism and relaxation” ( R 2 =0.290).

The result of the cluster analysis presented in Table V will be described and discussed in the rest of this section.

Respondents in the first cluster (23 cases) score the meaning “Personal, inner development” higher and the meaning “Escapism and relaxation” lower than the average. Hedonic value orientation is also scored lower, alongside the value orientation benevolence while the value orientation power is strongly represented. It may be concluded that for this group travelling means to work on themselves to acquire recognition (the value orientation power includes items such as social recognition and preserving one’s public image). In line with the United Nation Global Compact and Accenture (2014) study, this group is looking for a meaningful experience that will help them to develop as an individual and strengthen their social position. They will not be attracted by the offer of a merely hedonic experience ( Steg et al. , 2012 ) while, if a sustainable tourism experience is framed as status enhancing, they may choose for it ( Steg et al. , 2014 ).

With its 66 cases, the second group is the most consistent of the nine clusters individuated. Universalist values are strong in this cluster together with self-direction. This group values, on the one side, the beauty of the natural environment and wishes to see it protected; and on the other side, values creativity, freedom and independence. Differently form the first cluster, this group does not highly value social recognition. In line with their universalist value orientation, the meaning given to travel is “Development through interpersonal exchange”, a meaning that includes alongside getting in contact with local people, the wish to live in contact with nature. Self-transcending values, such as universalism, presuppose the ability to surpass the self and meaningfully connect with other people and nature ( Schwartz, 1994 ). They are therefore intimately linked to altruistic values ( De Groot and Steg, 2008 ). Moreover, people who strongly endorse universalism generally value more positively options that benefit the environment ( Steg et al. , 2014 ). The present study’s results confirms, therefore, Cavagnaro and Staffieri (2015) who found evidence for a core group of young tourists motivated by pro-environmental and pro-social values in their travel choice. To this group, travelling means an opportunity to learn and understand other people’s culture in order to create a better world in an open and unconstrained way. A (sustainable) tourism proposition targeting this group should respect their wish for independency and freedom. It should therefore let them feel in control, and insist more on the beauty of the natural environment and the freedom to experience it than on constraints to its fruition.

Benevolence values are salient to the 48 cases composing the third clusters while the hedonic and stimulation value orientations are less salient to this group. Benevolence values are, together with universalism, self-transcendent values ( Schwartz, 1994 ). The meaning given to travel seems at first sight to be contradicting the preference given to self-transcendent values and the mild aversion towards hedonic ones of this cluster: “Escapism and relaxation” and “Personal, inner development”. In interpreting this result, it may be considered that travelling is a hedonic experience ( Kim et al. , 2012 ) and that therefore the meaning “Escapism and relaxation” is not by definition grounded in a hedonic and a stimulation value orientation. Arguably in line with UNWTO and WYSE Travel Confederation (2011) , this group needs travelling and the opportunity that it gives to escape from everyday life to give meaning to their own life and the life of others.

The fourth and fifth groups, with respectively 33 and 34 cases, score lower than average on all value orientations. They seem undecided on the guiding principles of their life, and in this indecisiveness, they relate to all value orientations less positively than the other groups. This may reinforce the observation that the millennial generation upholds values that are strongly different from those of older generations ( Howe and Strauss, 2000 ). This indecision, though, may also represent a stage in their development, a step in constructing their own identity. The relative importance of values may in fact change in time ( Steg et al. , 2014 ). Though similar in their uncertainty regarding values, these two clusters differ in the meaning they give to travel: cluster 4 highlights “Development through interpersonal exchange” and cluster 5 “Socializing and entertainment”. Considering that for cluster 5, the most negatively laden value orientations are benevolence and self-direction (where creativity and independence are valued), it may be argued that they travel in order to find unpretentious, standardised entertainment with like-minded existing and new friends. In cluster 4, the most negatively laden value orientation in conformity, including values such as self-discipline and politeness. This cluster may consider travelling an opportunity to meet new people and break with the beaten path without much regard for others.

Cluster 6 (with 56 values the second largest) and 8 (52 cases) show a picture that seems completely the opposite than cluster 4 and 5: all values score above average. Apparently respondents in cluster 6 and 8 are as undecided on the guiding principle of their life as respondents in cluster 4 and 5, yet – instead of distancing themselves from all values – they embrace them all. Not completely unsurprisingly, then, the value orientations that scores relatively higher than the rest in cluster 6 and 8 is conformity, while hedonism scores a bit lower than the rest. In the meaning they give to travel, though, cluster 6 and 8 differ. Cluster 6 resembles cluster 1 and 3, where “Escapism and relaxation” and “Personal, inner development” also scored higher than average. Cluster 1 and 3, though, had clearer views on the value orientations salient to them. It may therefore be argued that also for the young tourists represented by cluster 6, travelling means an opportunity to escape the daily grind and focus on the own development. This time, thought, not in view of some other benefit (such as strengthening the social position, as in cluster 1, or giving meaning to life, such as in cluster 3) but because that is what travelling is supposed to be. Cluster 8 embraces only the meaning “Personal, inner development”. For this group then travelling is not linked to the need to escape everyday life, but means an opportunity for personal development in the broadest sense of the word.

Cluster 7 (48 cases) and 9 (40 cases) are united in their lower than average scores on universalism and tradition and a bit higher than average score on hedonic value orientation. Hedonic values are connected with having pleasure in the present moment ( Steg et al. , 2012 ) and, as it has been stated above, do not bring by definition to consider travel as a mere opportunity to have fun. Cluster 7 and cluster 9, consequently, differ in the meaning given to travel. Cluster 7 opts for “Escapism and relaxation”, and seems to consider travelling an opportunity to escape from the quotidian to celebrate and enjoy life without much consideration for others or the natural environment. For respondents in cluster 9, travelling means “Socializing and entertainment”: they wish to enjoy life without any further consideration, as cluster 7, but wish to include old and new friends in the pleasure that they seek. This is line with literature suggesting that having fun with friends is an important need to young travellers ( UNWTO and WYSE Travel Confederation, 2011 ). With their marked indifference for universalism values, cluster 7 and 9 are the most difficult to reach with a sustainable tourism offer.

Summing up the analysis conducted above, it can be observed, first, that not all young travellers have a clear view on the guiding principles in their life. Some, such as in cluster 6, seem to embrace them all; others, such as in cluster 4 and 5, seem to reject them all. Whether this result points to the emergence of new values typical for millennials or to a passing phase in their personal development cannot be said on the basis of this study. Longitudinal research is needed to further explore this point.

Second, it is interesting to observe that out of the four cluster of young tourists who seem not to have a clear view on their own values, two favour the meaning “Escapism and relaxation” and/or “Socializing and entertainment”, while the other two favour a meaning connected to development. Here, too, only a longitudinal study may be able to assess whether the different meaning given to travel leads to distinctive experiences that may in turn result in variations in the relative importance given to values by these two groups ( Steg et al. , 2014 ).

Third, looking at the interplay of the value orientations with the meaning given to travel, clusters 6, 7 and 9 present a common pattern: a preference for escapism is connected with hedonic values higher than average and self-transcendent values lower than average. This preference fits with the popular image of young tourists exploited by TV series such as Oh-Oh Cherso: they seek sheer entertainment without consideration for others and nature. This image, though, as the other clusters show, does not fully correspond with the reality of young tourism. The reality, in fact, is much more variegated and complex than so-called reality show wish us to believe. In short, even when considering all value orientations and not only the four directly linked to sustainable choices, the picture drawn in Cavagnaro and Staffieri (2015) is confirmed. Two clusters (2 and 3) present strong self-transcendent values (respectively universalism and benevolence), opening up the possibility to target these millennials with a tailor made sustainable tourism offer.

Finally, the analysis above has also shown that looking either at values or at the meaning to travel is not enough to understand the subtle differences among millennials. Only by combining the two, a tourism offer can be designed properly answering their needs.

Conclusion including research’s limitations, practical implications and originality

Before discussing the originality and practical implications of this study, it is proper to look at its limitations. This study reaches a representative sample of the Dutch young population, but it will need replication in different national contexts before its results can be widely generalised. Moreover, it considers only one of the components constituting the travel experience, i.e. travel meaning. Future studies should consider more components, such as the choice of a destination and the travel evaluation. Finally, to uncover eventual developments, a longitudinal approach is needed.

Notwithstanding these limitations, the study makes an original contribution to the literature on millennials and tourism. To the authors’ knowledge, the connection between Schwartz’s value orientations on one side and the meaning as a component of the travel experience on the other side has not been attempted earlier. Thanks to this connection, moreover, the present study offers a more sophisticated image of millennial travellers than previous ones. In short, it shows that, notwithstanding all shared characteristics that distinguish them from previous generations, millennials are not a homogeneous tourist group. To better understand the elusive differences among millennials, future studies are needed. These studies may, for example, consider gender or origin differences. Future studies are recommended to follow an integrated approach such as the one chosen for this study.

The main practical implications of the study’s results are linked to the refined image that it has revealed of millennials. Tourism organisations in general and destination management organisations in particular should take notice that the millennial target group is not homogenous. To satisfy millennial tourists in the present and future, tourism organisations should consider the different values that they uphold and the different meanings that they give to travel. Specifically, this study has been able to confirm that there is a consistent group of millennials (here represented by cluster 2 and 3) that are pointedly motivated by self-transcending values and that look to the travel experience as an opportunity to learn and understand other people’s culture in order to create a better world for themselves and others. This group is open to a sustainable tourism offer and represents an opportunity for the tourism industry to grow without jeopardising its own future ( UNWTO and WYSE Travel Confederation, 2008 ).

Value orientations and values

Tourism experience – need component (meaning) processed from sampled data

R 2 for each component (PCA) and R 2 global for the number of partitions solutions processed from sampled data

Clusters of young people: the number of cases and Final Cluster Centres processed from sampled data

A CAWI survey, though online, is similar to the traditional printed survey. With the CAWI technique, the units are identified through a process of self-selection: they are invited to respond to a questionnaire available on the internet. Immediately after compilation, all information is recorded in a database and can be used for the analysis.

Principal component analysis is a statistical procedure aimed at reducing the number of variables ( Di Franco and Marradi, 2013 ).

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Acknowledgements

Corresponding author

About the authors.

Elena Cavagnaro is a Professor at the Academy of International Hospitality Research, Stenden Hotel Management School, NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands.

Simona Staffieri is based at the Italian National Institute of Statistics, Rome, Italy.

Albert Postma is a Professor of Applied Sciences at the European Tourism Futures Institute, NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands.

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Tourist Experience in Destinations: Rethinking a Conceptual Framework of Destination Experience

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The tourist experience: an experience of the frameworks of the tourist experience?

This contribution aims to produce a critical literature review of the recent collaborative works dealing with the notion of tourist experience (Sharpley and Stone, 2012; Filep and Pearce, 2013; Prebensen, Chen and Uysal, 2014; Decroly, 2015). Organized around four questions (what is not/does not produce experience in tourism?, what is the use of the tourist experience?, what is an unsuccessful tourist experience? and can forms of inauthentic experiences exist?), it particularly tries to highlight what these studies, stemming from different disciplines and traditions of research (management sciences, psychology, geography, anthropology, education sciences, etc.) have in common. It also intends to show that through the plurality of approaches emerge zones of friction and tension in the definition of this central notion of tourism. It thus shows that there are today three main approaches to this notion: in a first sense, the tourist experience can be understood as “everything that happens in a tourist situation”. In a second sense, the tourist experience can be conceived as a learning process of the different world and otherness. Finally, within the framework of the third approach, which is highly influenced by management sciences, it becomes a program for consumption for tourist action. This last meaning in particular highlights the fact that the tourist experience thus defined is perhaps less the experience of otherness than the experience of the consumption of another, or, to say it differently, the fact that the tourist experience is maybe ultimately only an experience of the frameworks of tourist consumption.

Entrées d’index

Keywords :, texte intégral.

1 “The notion of experience”, explains Decroly, “holds [ … ] of a potluck dinner, of which the researchers define the content according to their needs” (2015: 6). Indeed, in the research that deals with this notion, the tourist experience is at times defined as “a complicated psychological process” (Quinlan Cutler and Carmichael, 2010: 3) and at times as a “lived occurrence” (Simon, 2015), at times as an exercise of identity-building (Jaurand, 2015) and at times as a dialogical renegotiation of ones’ beliefs and habits (Henning, 2012), at times as a practice of self-transformation (Saunders, Laing and Weiler, 2013) and at times as a quest for happiness or well-being (Sharpley and Stone, 2012; Panchal, 2013), so much so that by caricaturing it would be possible to say that there are as many definitions of the tourist experience as there are contributions which relate to it. Conceived as a critical literature review, the purpose of this article will thus certainly not be to propose yet another, but merely to bring out on the one hand the “commonplaces” with regards to the various definitions of this notion and on the other hand the contradictions and areas of friction between the recent and major approaches.

2 In order to do this, Cohen’s founding research (1979) will be latently mobilized as a theoretical frame of reference. In this respect, let us recall that Cohen, in line with a philosophical tradition, had granted to the notion of experience a relatively strong ontological power: it thereby defined ways of being towards the world – touristic – enabling to live in the world – daily. This choice lies in the fact that, since Cohen’s research, the notion of tourist experience has become so commonplace that it ends up precisely covering, as notes Decroly, an infinity of definitions (which for the great majority, it has to be said, position themselves relative to Cohen’s definition). The real question is then to understand how the notion of tourist experience has been emptied of its ontological dimension and to hence try to confine it to its contemporary topicality.

3 This topicality, I place it in the words of Kadri and Bondarenko when they argue that “the professional discourse exerts [ … ] a certain influence on the scientific discourse, which reproduces the use of words by avoiding their definition. [ Thus, ] in the manner of the word “destination” which seems to be self-sufficient through its semantic power [ … ] the expression “tourist experience” also carries a potential of imagination which spares it from being defined” (2015: 23). All in all, the tourist experience seems to have become a sort of contemporary myth of tourism in the sense understood by Roland Barthes (1957), in other words, a naturalized ideology of consumption. The object of this article will be to demonstrate this.

4 To this end, this contribution will be organized around four major questions of rhetorical purpose. At first, it will try to comprehend the specificities of what is/produces experience in tourism. This first stage responds in particular to an aporia that emerges when one browses the scientific literature relating to the tourist experience: numerous studies indeed start from the principle that tourism is experience. Their objective then consists in describing what tourism is in singular and contextualized situations in order to finally describe the experience itself. Yet, if everything is experience in tourism, the following question arises: why continue to speak of tourist experience?

5 Responding to this question will be the object of the second movement of this contribution which, since it focuses on research that aims to define the notion of tourist experience, will be organized around the question of its purpose. The two main trends in the definition of the tourist experience today will then be highlighted: the one, process-oriented, which forges links with the question of learning and transformation of the world’s resources into knowledge; the other, which considers the tourist experience as “a moment to be lived” turned towards pleasure and hedonism and the purpose of which therefore consists in keeping its promises or succeeding. This will then lead us to ask ourselves what is a successful experience or, in this case, an unsuccessful one.

6 The third movement will thus try to show that a tourist experience destined for failure or for success is finally nothing more than an experience conceived in terms of an offer of consumption. In other words, by wondering why an experience can be considered as bad, this movement will show how the experience is transformed until it is able to “naturally” undergo the (dis)qualifying (and often quantitative) test of “customer satisfaction”. Considered as a mode of consumption of the tourist offer, the experience is from then on, always an artifact experience produced by the industry, so much so that one can wonder about the place of authenticity in the tourist (consumption) experience.

7 This question will be at the heart of the fourth and last movement within which we shall ponder whether the proposition that there may be “inauthentic experiences” in a tourist situation makes sense. We shall then show that regardless of the (in)authenticity of the offer, the experience that one makes of it is always authentic: one can thus be authentically disappointed by a simulacrum that one recognizes as such. What one then (authentically) experiences is the framework of the tourist experience, or the communication and marketing framework by which the tourist experience is proposed.

What is not/does not produce experience in tourism?

8 If one relies on the diversity of recent research which deals with tourist experience (Sharpley and Stone, 2012; Filep and Pearce, 2013; Prebensen, Chen and Uysal, 2014; Decroly, 2015), this one seems capable of being grasped and studied through a wide plurality of situations: whether one travels alone or with family (Larsen and Laursen, 2012), whether one leaves one’s home for cultural reasons by for example going to (re)discover the immaterial heritage of the and alusian flamenco (Matteucci, 2013) or for identity reasons by going to relax on a gay nudist beach (Jaurand, 2015), whether one stays on a farm (Dubois and Schmitz, 2015) or in a hotel chain (Cinotti, 2015), whether one roams the city (Simon, 2015; Erdely, 2012; Bolan, Boyd, and Bell, 2012), whether one goes on the road (Saunders, Laing, and Weiler, 2013) or soaks in spas (Panchal, 2013), whether one is young or old (Major and McLeay, 2012)... a characteristic which is common to all these tourist situations – and to many others – would indeed be that it is always possible to refer to experience.

9 These studies show through their interdisciplinarity that, in order to describe and qualify this tourist experience on the scale of each singular situation, one must take into account several contextual variables which will be dealt here autonomously for reasons of convenience, but which are in fact intricately connected since they jointly define a “tourist situation”: this is (i.) space and (ii.) time, which may not be considered independently, but also (iii.) tourist sociabilities, which participate in the (re)configuration of the way one communicates with the different space-time- of the journey.

10 In the first place, then, space. The tourist practice is indeed inevitably located (MIT Team, 2002). From this point on, the tourist experience proceeds from what Larsen and Laursen (2012) call “an interactive process” between the tourist and space, which must be understood in a very broad sense including not very tangible characteristics such as atmosphere, luminosity, smells, etc. (Taheri and Jafari, 2012). Through this type of relation (of which one can discuss the strictly dialogical character), tourists operate what Certeau had identified as the transformation of this “instantaneous configuration of positions” that is place in space (1980: 173). In that respect, through their practices of the place which they identify as different, tourists participate in the production of tourist space. This space can be enlarged to include any object which composes it in the way one conceives the most archetypal space of the projection of the other, namely museum space which is not only made of spatialities, but also of artifacts, mediation mechanisms, knowledge, etc. (Davallon, 2000). A tourist space would thus be a place which one practices as a tourist, in other words a territory characterized by the fact that everything that composes it can at any time be identified as a marker of otherness.

11 A second variable of crucial importance to understand the tourist experience is that of the temporal variable. If the tourist experience occurs when one practices a different space, it is also a delimited moment of the temporal continuum. The tourist experience is thus a dedicated moment outside of everyday life (Major and McLeay, 2012) – a time for holiday – during which one practices a series of activities which one does not undertake in the ordinary and daily course of one’s life (Henning, 2012) or which, if need be, are requalified because they take place elsewhere. This was for instance shown by Bourdieu with the example of the dinner at the restaurant of a certain social class which, in a tourist situation, could be the object of a photo shoot, but which would on the other hand seem perfectly inappropriate – at the time of the study – in everyday life (1965). This is also what Winkin alludes to when he talks about the “momentary suspension of the economic and social rules in force” to describe among other things, tourist situations (2002).

12 Another aspect of the temporal variable is the dramaturgy or the temporality of the journey. If the time of the stay is important to describe and qualify the tourist experience, the fact remains that it begins before the journey and continues after it.

13 In fact, anticipating, preparing one’s journey and documenting it is at the same time: a way of producing a horizon of expectation (Jauss, 1978) of the located experience – since the media and the mediations build our representations and practices, to the extent that they sometimes even originate them (Bolan, Boyd, Bell, 2012) – and a first experience of the destination itself, the main characteristic of which is to be media or to be broadcast and in which the “digital” nowadays becomes increasingly important (Korneliussen, 2014). Whereas, afterwards, sharing the account of the journey (Urbain, 2011) – is nowadays also increasingly digitalized through the use of social networks (Yüksel and Yanik, 2014) –, is experience in the sense that it is a time for formatting and transmitting what happened “out there”.

14 Finally, the third variable is sociability. All types of interactions that take place between tourists on one side and hosts and others on the other side can thus be considered as also configuring experience (Prebensen, Chen and Uysal, 2014; Condevaux, 2015). But not only: as sociabilities also occur between tourists (Smed, 2012) – a part of research still needs to be developed (Decroly, 2015: 10) –, the experience more generally takes place in co-presences (Fijalkow, Jalaudin and Lalanne, 2015).

15 Simultaneously informed and informative, mediated and immediate, individual and collective, the tourist experience is downright complex, and numerous researchers recall that it is even more so as the experience is subjective and therefore difficult to observe, even if there are objective variables (Fijalkow, Jalaudin and Lalanne, 2015). It is subjective because it is truly singular and personal; also, and especially, because it obviously requires a subject. This is what Henning very clearly proposes when he says: “ Troy is a tourist experience every time tourists do tourist things there ” (2012).

16 Space, time and the interactions involved can be the conditions and objects of a tourist experience only to the extent that a subject of experience is there to apprehend them; to the extent thus that there is a subject of experience (a tourist) and an object of experience (an object which these variables enable to circumscribe in the unity of a “tourist situation”). The tourist experience is thus not preexistent in the world, but is clearly brought into being when, by the effect of a subject who practices it, the territory becomes a destination: in other words, when a fragment of space transforms into a site or tourist attraction, when the time of daily activities turns into holiday, when the other changes into a native or a representative of the local society and the subject himself becomes a tourist (MIT Team, 2002).

17 In order for experience to be touristic, it must link an individual with a world (an inhabited space-time), the former wishing to get in touch with the latter within the framework of a tourist relation. The tourism experience thus presupposes two distinct and complementary cognitive operations. First a movement of externalization: a subject of action and desire must establish a rupture between himself and the world around him (a world – here touristic – is thus identified as an exteriority by virtue of which he “deserves the trip”). It is this movement of externalization which institutes a distinction between a contiguous world of practices (everyday life) and a different world (non-everyday life). It is this principle of symbolic externalization which is at the source, in large metropolises, of strategies which consist, for example, in making residents (re) discover the city “as tourists”: suddenly their contiguous life-space must no longer seem “obvious” to them. Next, a movement of internalization: he must accept the idea that this world, which has become different, can be appropriated as an exteriority within the framework of a tourist practice. Erik Cohen says nothing less when he explains that tourism and experience (or the various “modes ” of experience) that proceed from it are based on the idea of a center. Tourism – the unconstrained pleasure trip –, as the author explains, is thus justified by the fact that there must exist so mething “out there ” which cannot be found in the ordinary “life-space ” (1979: 182). For the tourist, it is a question of measuring the difference between here and elsewhere, with as reference the ordinary life-space – the center – and consequently creating a touristic elsewhere (be it geographic or not) in the order of eccentricities. It is because, as Dubet notes, “the construction of social experiences is necessary when situations are no longer part of homogeneous universes of meaning or, to put it simply, when “society” is no longer One ” (1994: 18).

18 Subjectivity is thus of fundamental importance to understand why experience can occur in any tourist situation and at any moment. It explains, for example, that managing to pour warm water from an English tap without a mixer or pushing the strange wooden latch of a door at a “traditional” guesthouse in Dubai or, in general, undertaking small actions may represent a tourist experience for some people.

19 It also explains why tourism – independently from each singular situation – can be grasped as an experience in the continuity of these (spatial, but also symbolic) movements identified by the MIT Team to describe the tourist practice (2002).

20 Ultimately, it explains why many studies which deal with the tourist experience finally do not investigate what, precisely, produces or is experience in the tourist situations they study. Experience becomes the presupposition of practice and is in this sense implicitly defined as everything that makes up the tourist life of tourists . This first approach to the tourist experience is based on a very broad definition, the specificity of which is that it does not distinguish anything in particular in the practice of tourism. However, it posits the fact that tourism is an operation whose first characteristic is to transform the world into an experience. The experience thus becomes a way of apprehending everything that happens in a touristic situation (2002).

What is the use of the tourist experience?

21 Indeed, “the journey”, explains Gilles Brougère, “provides an original and unprecedented bodily experience. Walking around makes it possible to measure the size of buildings on a human scale. To pass through the Lion’s Gate, to enter the tombs, to walk along the surrounding walls, so many experiences, producing knowledge different from that received through books” (2015: 179). If one believes the author, in a tourist situation, experience would thus be linked to learning.

22 This experiential approach, as explain Zeitler and Barbier, calls upon another notion – the theoretical – to which it opposes in order to define itself. “In common sense”, the authors explain, “the concept of experience presents itself as questioning the dominance of theory over practice: to have gained experience is to have learned not only for the activity but within the activity itself […]. This acceptance of common sense is based on and [thus] reinforces the dichotomy between theory and practice insofar as it paradoxically leads to the practice the social attributes of theory […] but by inverting them: it is because the experience has been lived that it has a value backed by pragmatic efficiency […]; the authority of experience is then conferred by practice against theory” (2012).

23 From the point of view of this definition of experience proposed by Brougère, the body becomes a fundamental element: it is because it measures, feels, creates a relation to, and more generally experiences the different spatial, temporal and social variables of a contextualized tourist situation, that the body can incorporate the world and enter into a logic of learning in relation to what composes it. More precisely, it is first of all because there exists a sensitive body experiencing a located world and because this same body is inhabited by a will to incorporate the world through the transformation of its resources, that the tourist experience can occur.

24 This question on resource transformation is at the source of the theoretical approach to experiential marketing (Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982). The objective was then to show that the consumer is not just a rational individual who deals with information. In other words, the theoretical approach of experiential marketing was founded on the idea that consumption is indeed an exercise in the transformation of resources (not oriented to some ordinary learning but to the production of information which preside over the choices of consumption), but that it is not limited to that. The other side of consumption is thus precisely its experiential part, namely the one – symbolic – in which emotions pour out and sensations take shape.

25 Following this approach, recent research on tourist experience, from the marketing point of view hardly considers this issue of resource transformation. If they do discuss incorporation, it is worthwhile in itself. This is because experiential marketing, as Veron and Boutaud (2008) explain, is based on the idea that consumption must be driven by hedonistic values. It thus places the multisensory and the immersive at the center of the experiential process and can generally be defined as a “displacement of sense to the senses”: “in search of experiences, the subject asks to feel sensations, to test himself” (2008: 148).

26 One can thus note here two major trends in the definition of the notion of tourist experience that complement the first, defined as the tourist life of tourists: experience is conceived, on the one hand, as learning through the transformation of the different world’s resources (Brougère, 2015; Simon, 2015; Witsel, 2013); and on the other, as producing sensations and emotions. These two approaches to tourist experience have radically different implications. In the first case, the tourist experience is essentially defined as a process; in the second case, as a moment to live out .

27 As a process, the tourist experience builds on previous experiences.

28 The experience then becomes at once the actions and the lessons that are drawn from them or that will be drawn later. It is a sort of fund of knowledge, habits, sensations, emotions – touristic or not – that are mobilized in order to communicate with the tourist world, which can be experienced, readjusted, transformed at each new encounter (Henning, 2012). The experience is thus in continuous production.

29 As a moment (or collection of moments in the long term), the experience is a break with the continuum of ordinary life, that must be lived as “pure topicality” or as “an absolute present” (Boutaud and Veron, 2008: 150). It is thus conceived as – or rather, it holds as being ideal – that “suspended time” which can be lived fully, with its share of sensations and compensations: sharing a good time, emotions, enriching oneself in contact with others, discovering new sensations”. The experience is thus a “happy or peaceful interlude [ … ] suddenly detached from the depth of our existence” (Boutaud and Veron, 2008: 150) which ultimately takes less account of what has been than of what must be. The experience thus becomes a program for tourist action: a model of reference which explains to the tourist how he can – but above all how he must – apprehend the tourist world. Consequently, it is because it imposes norms (behavioral and emotional) that the tourist experience thus conceived can be submitted to the curious exercise of sanction or to the test of success or failure which is ultimately not entirely self-evident in a more philosophical sense of experience. This makes it possible to ask the following question: under what conditions can one speak of an “unsuccessful” tourist experience? With regard to which framework can the tourist experience be conceived as being bad?

What is an unsuccessful tourist experience?

30 In order to show that experience is both external and internal to the subject, Barberousse uses the example of a burn: “pain caused by a burn can illustrate this mixed character of experience. It is indeed an external element which is the cause of my painful experience; and it is indeed my conscious, individual, subjective life that is affected by it” (1997: 11-12). Tourism and the tourist experience are also made, if not of burns, but of moments of friction and crisis that can sometimes be so intense that they challenge the very meaning of the tourist practice, or even challenge the integrity of the subject (Urbain, 2008).

31 If the specific case of negative tourist experience studied by Skipper, Carmichael and Doherty (2012) certainly does not lead tourists to the landof Urbain’s Absurdia, it is nonetheless interesting for its relatively banal character. The authors indeed addressed the issue of “harassment” of tourists visiting Jamaica, or more concretely the regular solicitations of hawkers on streets, public beaches or markets that provoke annoyances, irritations, displeasure and sometimes anger among tourists. The study is fertile in particular since it perceives these interactions as such serious dysfunctions that they can be considered as “harassment”. The attitude of the vendors is thus at once included in the more general category of “negative host behavior” which must be corrected, reframed or normalized. The authors accordingly conclude by explaining that the Jamaican government could – these are recommendations – develop programs aiming to enhance the understanding of the encounter between others and hosts, but also that it could take steps to “clean the streets by allowing sales in certain specific places”. From this point of view, an experience that is bad is always destined to being identified, neutralized and banished from tourist spaces.

32 This is easily understandable when one focuses on the general aims of the book which welcomes the contributions of Skipper, Carmichael and Doherty on “harassment ” in Jamaica. In the introduction to Chapter One, Sharpley and Stone explain this in these terms: “there is a permanent necessity to develop our understanding of the phenomenon ” [ of tourist experience ] “so that the needs and expectations of tourists may be better met ” (2012). This is also reflected in the introduction to the collective work by Prebenson, Chen and Uysal, which explains that tourism is an industry that must learn to respond to the hedonistic motivations of travel in order to help tourists fulfill their expectations (2014).

33 Generally speaking, if the tourist is perceived in terms of needs and expectations – in other words, if he is considered as a consumer –, it is easy to imagine that the experience of which he is the subject becomes the place of encounter for supply and demand, and that it therefore cannot afford to be “bad” (or deceptive) in any way. Thus, in all these approaches, experience only occurs because there is a supply and it is therefore only an experience of consumption of tourist products and services.

34 This is very clearly explained by Sharpley and Stone in the introduction to their collective work when they argue that there are two ways of conceptualizing the tourist experience. The first is to consider experience as “the set of services or experiences consumed by the tourist during a holiday or time away from home”; as such, the tourist experience can therefore be subject to the “management of experience” (Morgan et al. , 2010: xv).

35 The second way of conceptualizing the tourist experience is to consider that it defines “being a tourist”, as the authors explain, that is to say not only to consume a certain combination of “provided experiences”, but also to enter into a process of construction of the meaning of these experiences by relating them to his ordinary sociocultural life. In short, in these two cases, experience is necessarily circumscribed within the framework established by consumption.

36 To put it another way, the necessary condition for that experience to occur is that it takes place in the context of a mercantile exchange and can thus always be monetized or monetizable. Pressured by the dictate and the injunction for success, the tourist experience becomes the field for an optimization that is in the end always possible, sanctioned by the criterion of satisfaction, namely the evaluation of experience depending on the expectations or perceptions of tourists about what matters in their vacation (Major and McLeay, 2012). On a more macro scale, one could say that optimization is to such an extent a stake in these approaches to the tourist experience that one could come to wonder who really is the subject of experience: the tourist-consumer or the managers of the experience, continuously backing up their practice with the knowledge gained from the management sciences and that from the lessons learned from their own practices?

37 In any case, one understands that an experience can only be unsuccessful to the extent that it has been programmed to succeed. Now, if the tourist experience is conceived in the strictly mercantile context of consumption, it becomes evident that the experience fails when the experience (not of the other strictly speaking) of the consumption of the other does not seem to correspond to what the engineers of enchantment have previously identified as the “expectations” of these consumers that are tourists relatively to their consumption of the other; “expectations” that the tourism industry must fulfill through the configuration of its products and services. This is precisely what explains that experience, when it fails, must be submitted to this process of optimization of supply which leads certain authors to make recommendations to the local political authorities. The failure of a possible experience thus makes it possible to understand that the representation of this same experience is relatively restrictive since finally, it only concerns the tacit clauses of consumption whereas the tourist experience can go far beyond this framework. To convince us of this, let us make a final detour by visiting the notion of authenticity.

Can forms of inauthentic experiences exist?

38 The notion of authenticity (MacCannell, 1976) has often been covered by tourist studies. It continues to be applied nowadays to try to understand what is at stake in the tourist experience. It is particularly addressed when authenticity is gone or faints away. In this sense, authenticity shares something with the notion of tradition as defined by Pouillon (1991). I ndeed, the ethnologist explained that a tradition can exist only if it is ignored as such by those who live it. “Of a living tradition”, he wrote, “one does not speak” since it is “operative” but “unconscious”. For a tradition to be identified as traditional (or for it to become conscious), it must therefore have ceased to have the same social and symbolic operability. Thus, “the tradition one is conscious of is the tradition one no longer respects, or at least one is ready to leave behind”.

39 Similarly, authenticity, at least in the way it is studied through the varied research of tourist studies, seems to be addressed when, for one reason or another, is considered to have failed. Authenticity is thus the object of research from the moment one considers that it starts being performed or “staged ” (MacCannell, 1976). Often linked to the notion of simulacrum (Dubois and Schmitz, 2015, Aquilina and Mahéo, 2015), authenticity then clearly bears a certain representation of what the transformation of cultures is or should be as a socio-historical process: when it comes to authenticity, transformation is indeed experienced as a degradation of culture and sometimes of identity (Dubois and Schmitz 2015). Contaminated by globalized market logics, it dies out.

40 Yet, as Parent (2015) shows, the transformation of tradition into self-staging is not necessarily a process that must be considered as an impoverishment. Studying traditional music shows in the Seychelles, the author explains that the musicians who perform them are “generally conscious and concerned about the fact that they represent the local culture” (2015: 231). Referring to Bouju (2002), she explains that the tourist appropriation and the transformation of tradition she initiates can make it possible to enhance and build the local musical heritage.

41 Carpentier goes even further when studying community tourism in the Ecuadorian Amazon: “to judge the authenticity of a practice, even if it is staged”, writes the author, “appears totally illusory. The real question lies in the significance of the staging for the concerned populations and in the stakes involved” (2015: 304). She shows that self-staging can be considered by communities as a good way to improve their living conditions and politically, to integrate a globalized system (2015: 307).

42 By looking at these studies we do not intend to renew the debate on the effects (positive or negative) of tourism on identities and heritage. Our purpose is only to put forward the idea that, in the end, no matter which value judgment one makes on what tourism has to offer to its tourists (authenticity, inauthenticity, simulacrum, etc.) – no matter whether one thinks that the show is “adulterated” or not (Winkin, 2001: 220) –, it is important not to confuse the staging and the experience of this staging. In other words, there is no contiguity between the (in)authenticity of the staging and the eventual(in)authenticity of the experience.

43 The fact is that there can be no inauthentic tourist experiences, but only tourist experiences of the inauthentic: if the show is fabricated (no matter whether one considers that the staging is legitimate or not), the experience that one makes of it as a tourist cannot be a simulacrum.

44 This is what Brougère shows when he explains that “research on social tourism has highlighted the importance of wonder, largely related to seeing “for real” instead of through television; whether at a traditional chocolate factory or at a glass blower’s, what matters is contact, the presence of the body in space [...], to have been there more in the logic of reality than of authenticity. Indeed, the observations are similar when it comes to visiting a safari-like zoo with its “African village”. Here again, it is not the artificiality that is emphasized, but the relation with reality, the movement of a body in a bus, then on foot in the “African village” where one can buy souvenirs (another practice that involves the body)” (2015: 178).

1 The title refers to the transformation of the planet into some sort of Disneyland. (T.N.)

45 This is also what Brunel’s book “ La Planète disneylandisée 1 ” (2006), or some of the unsuccessful trips studied by Urbain (2008), showed. Even at times when the encounter with the other is deceptive – often because it indulges in a patent inauthenticity –, somewhat of an experience takes place for tourists. The experience can thus be a puppet artifact, it nevertheless remains an experience.

46 These moments of failure are therefore precious. The fact is, they allow us to ask ourselves the following question: if we fail to access the authenticity of the other when we travel, what is it, in the end, that we experience?

47 One can find a first lead to an answer in the study conducted by Pabion Mouriès on the analysis of the interactions between actors which she carried out on the figure of the Kyrgyz nomad (2015). In particular, it describes the Kyrgyz people who are hosts in the project initiated by the NGO Shepherd’s Life – for these hosts, the project consists in welcoming tourists in their yurts and introducing them to the “traditional” ways of life in the steppes –, know how to put on a performance in order to satisfy tourists. One of them, Nazira, explains that she knows precisely how to behave on a photograph: “I look at the horizon, I never look at the camera [ … ] . Tourists hate it when one strikes a pose [ … ] . They love what is natural, authentic. We must continue our daily activities, empty the guts of the sheep, spread our sheets, milk the mares, make the koumis” (2015: 317). This woman explains clearly that what she offers is not authenticity, but a certain type of authenticity defined by the way she grasps the framework of the tourist situation.

48 Let us recall that Goffman used to define the frameworks of the experience by saying that “insofar as a framework articulates our own reactions to the world and the world to which we react, the determination of what happens necessarily involves some reflexivity; in other words, the correct perception of a scene necessarily presupposes that the act of perception is an integral part of the scene” (1991: 95). Thus, when Nazira interacts with tourists, she explicitly mobilizes a framework of the tourist experience, the perception of which is an integral part of the scene.

49 If one accepts that the hosts, such as Nazira, integrate the framework into the way they show themselves, why not accept, equivalently, that the tourists also take it into account? Why, then, not to start thinking that what one experiences as a tourist is not the other properly speaking (whether staged or authentic), but the framework of the experience of the other?

50 The idea is particularly interesting when applied to the managerial approach to experience. If the experience only occurs on the condition that there is an offer, this means that the tourist-consumer experience is nothing more than the mercantile frameworks of the experience. Henceforth, the experience is no longer what the mercantile frameworks claim to give access to, but rather the devices themselves and the way in which they claim to give access to certain “cultures” or “facts of culture”. This seems to be confirmed in the book by Prebensen, Chen and Uysal (2014), which intends to renew the approach to the tourist experience through the notion of co-creation.

51 The authors indeed explain that it is now understood that the consumer is not a passive actor of the mercantile relationship. On the contrary, he co-produces and co-creates the services and goods which he consumes. The tourist industry must take note of this in order to develop services and goods that will be produced jointly by suppliers and consumers. The resulting tourist experience is strictly speaking one of co-creation. A question arises however: if tourists are valued as co-creators of experiences in this sort of case, when the experience fails for one reason or another, can the providers of co-created services blame the tourists? In other words: if one is a co-creator only when the initiative is a success, is one really a co-creator?

52 What tourists experience in a co-creation situation is therefore less the strictly speaking co-created product or service, than the very procedure of co-creation itself. If one wants to be cynical by following the view of Dujarier (2014), the tourist experience then proposed to tourists is one of a new ideology of consumption in which the externalization of certain production tasks has been diluted. In short, when it is circumscribed within the space opened and closed by consumption, the tourist experience appears as an experience of control of the experience whose characteristic would be that it engages in the experience itself in a similar way to Eco’s hyperreality (1985).

53 To conclude, there appears to be three main trends in defining the concept of tourist experience nowadays. The first is to apprehend it as a sort of equivalent of “ the tourist life of tourists ” . Experience then is the presupposition of the journey defining the mode of apprehension of everything that happens to the tourist on the occasion of his practice of the new horizons. More restricted, the second trend is processual. The tourist experience is then turned towards learning. Corporeal, it is an incorporation of the world by the transformation of its resources into knowledge. Finally, the third definition, even more restrictive, considers the tourist experience in a strictly mercantile dimension: experience is the moment that occurs when tourism is considered as a market and the products and services that constitute and construct it can be assessed under “ customer satisfaction ” .

54 This last definition is particularly interesting insofar as it accompanies what might be called “the secularization of the notion of experience”. Nowadays, consumption – whether touristic or not – is almost entirely “experiential”. In other words, experience has become a mass product that is traded on the marketing market: professionals of this market thus sell to their customers – to the brands – the promise that their consumers will have an “experience” by browsing the shelves of their supermarkets or placing an order on their website. This secular experience is valued on the professional market on the pretext that it is in the end a brand experience capable of producing differentiation in a competitive universe, and therefore of preference.

55 Yet this is not what is marketed towards consumers: the brands explain that they will make them have the experience of a memorable and multisensory moment which will have value in itself (hoping however that the memorial imprint left by the experience will work and will subsequently produce the expected preference).

56 In short, experience is increasingly turning into a mode of management of brands by themselves, containing its own communication model for consumers. This can also be noted in the marketing approach to the definition of the tourist experience, in which the management of the experience becomes a real stake. In this perspective, for the tourist, experience ultimately is a program for consumption yet destined to be carried out as if it were not one.

57 If the approaches to the tourist experience as a transformation of resources for the production of knowledge on one side and as a program of consumption on the other may seem contradictory, it yet seems to me that they match on one point: a tourist career – borrowing here the term used by Pearce and Caltabiano (1983) – is also a consumer career from the moment one considers tourism as a practice of consumption. The tourist experience thus in fact appears to be a consumption experience and, when conceived in terms of long-term career, it highlights the fact that, as a tourist, one develops knowledge relative to each new situation of tourist consumption that one encounters and configures.

58 Being a tourist thus finally appears to develop communicative skills through the experience that one makes of the frameworks of the tourist experience as a mode of management of the brands of tourism.

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Pour citer cet article

Référence électronique.

Hécate Vergopoulos , « The tourist experience: an experience of the frameworks of the tourist experience? », Via [En ligne], 10 | 2016, mis en ligne le 01 décembre 2016, consulté le 06 septembre 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/viatourism/1352 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/viatourism.1352

Hécate Vergopoulos

Assistant Professor CELSA - Université Paris-Sorbonne Groupe de recherches interdisciplinaires sur les processus d’information et de communication laboratory

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Tourist Experience in Destinations: Rethinking a Conceptual Framework of Destination Experience

Journal of marketing research and case studies.

Walid BERNAKI and Saida MARSO

Encg, university of abdelmalek essaadi, tangier, morocco, academic editor: esther sleilati, cite this article as: walid bernaki and saida marso (2023), “tourist experience in destinations: rethinking a conceptual framework of destination experience ", journal of marketing research and case studies, vol. 2023 (2023), article id 340232, doi: 10.5171/2023.340232, copyright © 2023. walid bernaki and saida marso. distributed under creative commons attribution 4.0 international cc-by 4.0.

Tourism experience is a genuine source of destination attractiveness and long-lasting competitive advantage. Understanding the main drivers of the tourist experience in destinations is a critical step toward managing and delivering a satisfying destination experience to tourists. However, amidst a stream of research that explores experiences in different service settings, a framework of destination experience remains underexplored. To fill this gap in research, this article aims to draw an integrated conceptual framework of what makes a tourist experience in destinations along the travel journey and depicts the antecedents and consequences. By doing so, DMOs and other tourism stakeholders can fit their marketing strategies to cater to tourists’ needs and preferences. Also, this article discusses several measures and emerging research methods to capture the components of the destination experience.

Introduction

Recently, the concept of customer experience has received renewed attention in the tourism and leisure literature (Godovykh & Tasci, 2020a; Verhulst et al., 2020; Chen et al., 2021; Kim & Seo, 2022). Indeed, many businesses have adopted customer experience management, incorporating the concept of experience into their core objectives (Kundampully et al., 2018). Admittedly, a survey by Gartner (2014) reveals that 89% of companies consider experiences on the front line of their business competitiveness. It is now one of the leading marketing strategies embraced by hospitality firms (e.g., Disneyland, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Starbucks, to name only a few) and tourist destinations (e.g., Morocco, Thailand, Korea, Spain, etc.) (Ketter, 2018). To date, Hudson and Ritchie’s (2009) case study of branding destination experience illustrates this paradigm shift in the marketing and management of destinations. Furthermore, Berry, Carbone, and Haeckel (2002) suggest that organizations that continue to reduce their costs to support lower prices as an alternative to customer experience to gain a competitive advantage may affect the value of their product and service offerings, potentially jeopardizing their competitiveness (Vengesayi, 2003).

Nowadays, all that someone wants when one is on travel is to engage in memorable experiences to satisfy their emotional and psychological benefits, to be part of the destination experience, local culture and people, and country history (Morgan, Elbe, and de Esteban, 2009; Boswijk et al., 2007; Pine & Gilmore, 1999). This suggests that the choice of a particular tourist destination is enhanced by the significant mental image it portrays or the “pre-experience” the tourist expects to have upon arrival rather than the functional and utilitarian benefits that used to consider when making their choices (Oh et al., 2007; Kirillova et al., 2016; Ketter, 2018). Thus, destinations are now challenged to provide experiences that cater to postmodern tourists’ expectations, dazzle their senses, and go beyond alternatives in the marketplace. In this context, providing a conceptual framework of what makes an overall tourist experience in the destination is mandatory for destination marketing to design, manage and deliver a superior experience to tourists as a source of long-lasting competitive advantage (Karayilan & Cetin, 2016; Cetin et al., 2019; Crouch & Ritchie, 2005). In this framework, this study is an attempt to set an integrated conceptual framework of destination experience that depicts the factors of tourist experience during the tourist journey. Notwithstanding, despite the wide stream of research looking at tourist experience in various service settings in destination (Arnould & Thompson, 1993; Quan & Wang, 2004; Vitterso et al., 2004; Prentice et al., 1998), understanding the total experience in destinations is challenging.

This article raises several concerns. The first concern defines the theoretical knowledge of the concept of customer experience in tourism literature. The second concern comprises a conceptual framework of destination experience, including the antecedents, the formation, and the consequences of the tourist experience in destinations. The final concern concludes with marketing and management implications and avenues of future research.

Literature Review

The Customer Experience in Tourism Literature

Since the late 1970s, the concept of experience has been an important research stream in consumer research (Jensen et al., 2015). By recognizing the experiential aspects of consumption, consumption has begun to be seen as an activity of production of meanings and a field of symbolic exchanges (Baudrillard, 1970), encompassed by what Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) call “the experiential view.” In their study, Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) refer to the experience concept as a personal and subjective occurrence with high emotional significance resulting from consuming goods and services. Fundamentally, this experiential perspective questions the limitations of conceptualizing consumption as a need-driven activity, wherein a customer is considered merely a cognitive agent, passive participant, and rational decision-maker that affords no emotions, symbolic, or spiritual relief (Angus, 1989) and focuses only on the quest for information and multi-attribute assessment (Addis & Holbrook, 2001). Against this background, it has replaced this functional and utilitarian view of consumption with an experiential view that emphasizes subjective responses and hedonism in the consumer’s way of thinking and acting (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982).

Particularly, since the emergence of the experience economy by Pine and Gilmore in 1999, the concept of customer experience has been increasingly cited at the forefront of researchers’ interest, particularly in tourism studies (e.g., Walls et al., 2011; Lugosi & Walls, 2013; Lemon & Verhoef, 2016; Andersson, 2007; Oh et al., 2007), in the same way, the management of customer/tourist experience has received growing attention in the general tourism literature (Schmitt, 2010; Verhoef et al., 2009; Tung & Ritchie, 2011; Brakus, Schmitt, & Zhang, 2008; Adhikari & Bhattacharya, 2016; Meyer & Schwager, 2007; Kundampully et al., 2018). Seemingly, tourism as a concept implies an experience. According to Holbrook and Hirschman (1982), this is explained by the fact that tourist and leisure activities, entertainment, and the arts are inherently defined by symbolic meanings and experiential aspects that make them intriguing research subjects.

Following Kim and Seo (2022), the tourism experience is central to the tourism and hospitality industry and the main determinant of tourists’ behavioral intention and decision-making (Huseynov et al., 2020; Shafiee et al., 2021; Klaus & Maklan, 2013). To date, many studies in tourism literature have described the prevalence of tourists’ emotions and their strong influence on service performance and tourists’ behavioral intentions, such as willingness to recommend and spread positive word-of-mouth (Godovykh & Tasci, 2020b; Verhulst et al., 2020; Hosany et al., 2015).

In the literature, more studies have exemplified an exhaustive and perplexing set of definitions and theoretical meanings of the experience construct (see table 1). Furthermore, numerous components emerge in the literature (e.g., affective, cognitive, conative, sensorial, and social), raising difficulties for academics and practitioners to fathom the concept of tourist experience (see table 2). These above components reflect a holistic structure of the destination’s positive and compelling tourism experiences (Godovykh & Tasci, 2020a).

Interestingly, the concept of customer experience has been approached primarily as a subjective, affective, and personal reaction to an event, market stimulus, or activity at different phases of the consumption process. For example, Otto and Ritchie (1996) define tourist experience as “the subjective mental state felt by participants during a service encounter” (p. 166). In their ground-breaking work, the authors claim that affective or emotion-based reports—i.e., the subjective, individual, and feelings experienced by tourists while traveling, are typically substantial in consumer behavior and marketing research. However, in conventional analysis, they are often neglected in explaining variances in tourists’ satisfaction evaluations, thereby limiting the understanding of consumer behavior. In addition, Schmitt (1999) considers customer experiences as “the private events that occur in response to stimulation (e.g., as provided by marketing efforts before and after purchase). They often result from direct observation and/or participation in events-whether they are real, dreamlike, or virtual” (p. 60). Also, Packer and Ballantyne (2016) refer to tourist experience as an individual’s immediate or ongoing, subjective, and personal reactions to an event, activity, or occurrence that usually happens outside one’s daily routine and familiar environment.

In anthropological and ethnological studies, experience is an individual’s expression of their own living culture (Bruner, 1986). In conceptual terms, customer experience differs from an event. While an event happens to others, to society, and to the world, an experience is unique, personal, and differs from one person to another (Abrahams, 1986, as cited in Carù and Cova, 2003, p. 270).

From a broader perspective, Verhoef et al. (2009) suggest that customer experience is more than the result of a single encounter; it is affected by every episode of the customer’s interaction process with a firm. This is in line with Larsen (2007), who argues that the tourist experience cannot be conceived simply as the various events that arise during a tourist visitation but as an accumulation of ongoing travel stages (e.g., pre-trip expectations, events at the destination, and post-visitation consequences). This implies that the experience occurs before the event or any other service and may last long after the experience (Gretzel & Jamal, 2009; Arnould, Price, & Zinkha, 2002; Lugosi & Walls, 2013). Accordingly, these mutual influences continue to affect tourists’ future behavior and expectations for the next journey (Godovykh & Tasci, 2020a). In this regard, some scholars, like Walls (2014) and Carbone and Haeckel (1994), shed light on experience as the “takeaway” impression or outcome people generate during their encounters with organizations’ products or services. For instance, Park and Santos’s (2016) investigation of the memorable experience of Korean backpackers states that the remembered experience is critical when determining future behavior and decision-making. The latter falls within the experience economy, wherein Pine and Gilmore (1999) submit that experience memorability captures customers’ hearts.

From a management and marketing standpoint, experience is seen as a novel and distinctive economic product that can be acquired as a separate good or service that satisfies postmodern consumer needs (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). As a result, the creation of an immersive backdrop for customers is now considered by the marketing discipline known as experiential marketing (Schmitt, 1999). According to Carù and Cova (2003), an experience is “mainly a type of offering to be added to merchandise (or commodities), products and services, to give the fourth type of offering which is particularly suited to the needs of the postmodern consumer” (p. 272). As an offering, experience has become closely related to a trip, journey, or even the attraction itself (Volo, 2009). Admittedly, an experience is created when “a company intentionally uses services as the stage and goods as props, to engage individual customers in a way that creates a memorable event” (Pine & Gilmore, 1999, p.11). That is, experiences are not self-generated but occur in response to staged modalities and the environment (Schmitt, 1999). Palmer (2010), in his conceptualization of customer experience in a retail setting, stated that it implies a variety of market stimuli that hold the potential to create value for customers. These stimuli are viewed as external factors that give birth to the experience.

Furthermore, Meyer and Schwager (2007) contend that contact with the service provider, whether direct or indirect, affects the customer’s experience. Direct contact occurs when a product or service is purchased, used, or provided. In contrast, indirect contact refers to unplanned encounters with service providers and touch-points that may entail reputation, a recommendation, advertising, after-sales support, and other factors (e.g., Payne et al., 2008). This shows that factors outside of an organization’s control, as well as those inside its control, have an impact on the customer experience (Verhoef et al., 2009).

In recent studies, in an attempt to define an all-comprehensive definition of the construct of experience, Lemon and Verhoef (2016) defined the concept of customer experience as “a customer’s cognitive, emotional, behavioral, sensorial, and social responses to a firm’s offerings during the customer’s entire purchase journey” (P.70). In this perspective, Bagdare and Jain (2013) refer to customer experience as all-inclusive and define it as “the sum total of cognitive, emotional, sensorial, and behavioral responses produced during the entire buying process, involving an integrated series of interaction with people, objects, processes, and environment in retailing” (p. 792). These definitions embrace the cognitive, emotional, sensory, and behavioral components of experience produced in the frame of different interactions with customers, stakeholders, and management processes. Generally speaking, managers and marketers have found it challenging to understand the relevance of the notion of the tourist experience and to identify the various interactions and relationships between customers/tourists and destination elements.

Table 1: An overview of definitions regarding the concept of customer/tourist experience

Table 2: Components of the concept of customer/tourist experience

The Value of Tourism Experience in Tourist Destinations:

Nowadays, with the increasing worldwide competition and the changing situation the world lives in due mainly to the post-pandemic period, the global economic crisis, and the emergence of a new form of technologies and behaviors, tourist destinations are not spared from these challenges. To adapt to these changes and maintain their position in the market, the tourism industry players need to develop and reinvent their tourism. Understanding their experiential offerings is therefore prominent to accomplish this. According to Pine and Gilmore (1999), the core value of destinations lies in the quality of the experience it offers. This experience can be strong that tourists might develop a deep emotional bond with their travel destination (Hidalgo & Hernandez, 2001) and influence their behavioral intentions (Prayag et al., 2017; del Bosque & San Martin, 2008). Nevertheless, limited studies address a comprehensive framework of what makes an overall tourist experience in the destination or implicitly depict the antecedents, formations, and consequences of the tourist experience in the destination (Cetin et al., 2019; Karayilan & Cetin, 2016). It is, therefore, within this context where this conceptual paper is located.

More specifically, within the context of tourist destinations, everything a “tourist goes through at a destination is an experience, be it behavioral or perceptual, cognitive or emotional, expressed or implied” (Oh et al., 2007, p. 120). Stated in another way, the destination elements, such as natural and cultural assets, spectacular scenery, and friendly local people, are no longer sufficient to satisfy the contemporary tourists’ needs and differentiate places in a highly competitive market (Hudson & Ritchie, 2009; Ketter, 2018). Instead, by providing a satisfying destination experience, destination managers and policy-makers can set their offering apart from their competitors (Schmitt, 2010), enhancing destination desirability to tourists and increasing, in return, destination profitability (Morgan, Elbe, and de Esteban, 2009; Lugosi and Walls, 2013).

To date, a great deal of research has explored experiences in specific settings, such as food experience (Quan & Wang, 2004), tourist attractions (Vitterso et al., 2000), backpackers (Park & Santos, 2016), heritage parks (Prentice et al., 1998), to name only a few. However, while these studies concentrate on a specific type of tourism experience, few studies have thoroughly approached the factors that holistically drive the tourism experience in destinations. The reality is, regarding the lack of a clear definition of the concept per se, the subjective nature of the construct, the timeframe of the experience, the dynamic nature of the destination itself, and the diverse approaches to the tourist experience are among the factors that make capturing the critical drivers of destination experience a difficult task (Godovykh & Tasci, 2020a).

Since the tourism experience extends a period of time and simultaneously involves synergistic interactions and consumption of products and services, destination managers cannot wholly orchestrate the drivers of the tourist experience in the destination (Lugosi & Walls, 2013; Walls et al., 2011). At best, they can only influence the psychological environment and the prerequisite that facilitate the conditions for the experience to take place (Mossberg, 2007). According to Lugosi and Walls (2013), experiences are a flow of emotions and thoughts that occur during destination encounters, including the influence of the physical environment (e.g., atmospherics, infrastructure, and superstructure), the social environment (e.g., the local community), and other customers (e.g., fellow tourists, friends and relatives). This is because a tourist’s experience entails a series of engagements and interactions with the tourism industry, meanings, and people’s surroundings (Moscardo, 2003). This interplay of interactions represents the core of the overall destination experience (Karayilan & Cetin, 2016). Within this analysis, the tourist experience can be regarded as a compound construct that originates from a set of interactions between tourists’ internal factors, such as cognition and senses; and an organization’s external factors, such as the physical environment, other tourists, employees, local communities, and tourism operators (Adhikari & Bhattacharya, 2016; Albayrak et al., 2018).

The Co-creation Perspective in Tourism Experience

In the last decade, consumer research has witnessed an ongoing period of changes in its theoretical and philosophical foundations. The framework within which the debates have been conducted is labelled “modernism versus postmodernism” (Featherstone, 1988; Firat, 1990; Firat & Venkatesh, 1993; Hirschman & Holbrook, 1992; Turner & Turner, 1990; Firat & Venkatesh, 1995; Fırat & Dholakia, 2006; Cova & Cova, 2009). The starting point of the first reflection is none other than the consumer who has changed status and even multiplied his functions and roles about the meanings he attributes to his consumption. Specifically, customers (e.g., tourists) have become less concerned about the material values of consumption and more interested in the experiential value they derive from activities and products (Firat & Dholakia, 2006). Arguably, Tarssanen and Kylänen (2006) put forward that the value in tourism activities is accumulated by means of more experiential elements and active participation, as opposed to simply visiting a particular tourist destination. Under this approach, Saraniemi and Kylänen (2011) consider the destination a dynamic entity where the tourist can “jump in.” Meaning that tourists are willing to co-create value with destination providers. For instance, Wu et al. (2015) argue that participatory experiences influence tourists’ perception of and satisfaction with their salt tourism experience.

Building on this theoretical analysis, the idea that the tourist experience is only determined by the industry and carried out by passive customers is contested in light of this theoretical approach. For example, Walls et al. (2011) proceed to argue that an experience is “self-generated and that the customer can control or choose whether he will have an experience or not (including negative experiences)” (p. 18). This is consistent with extant research, implying that tourists recall what they perform rather than what they see (Park & Santos, 2016). In fact, tourists form their own experiential space that fits their vision for what it should be, depending on their motivation and reasoning (Suvantola, 2002). This is why King (2002) explicitly notes that “customers interested in travel and tourism have an enormous range of experiences and destination options open to them, but they are increasingly in the driving seat when it comes to how they uptake their planning information, what they receive and the process they choose to go through in marketing their purchase” (p. 106). For this reason, many studies have emerged to recognize the modifying role of tourists in the creation and design process because the value of service and product offerings rely on tourists’ active participation in the consumption process.

Indeed, with the democratization of the Internet and the growing use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), Neuhofer et al. (2012) posit that tourists have become active participants in creating the experience they want to live in. Following these developments, Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004) assign tourists as co-creators of their own experiences. They presume that the value creation of destinations depends on the ability of destination management processes to facilitate tourists’ interactions within the tourism system, which allows tourists to personalize their own experiences. Thus, by leaving space for tourists, Richards and Wilson (2006) imply that such an approach can lead tourists to construct their trip narrative of their surroundings and form their personal perspective.

In this context, Ritchie and Hudson (2009) exhort marketers to concentrate their marketing actions and advertising on tourism experiences to evoke tourists’ senses and inspire them to co-create their experiences while co-constructing the meanings they are looking for (Cova, 1996). Similar to this, Scott et al. (2009) propose, for future research, a shift from experience as something inherent for the visitor to a management approach in which experience is co-created by the visitor and supplier. In summary, it can be concluded that a tourist experience is highly personal, subjective, and co-created by tourists and providers through a series of interactions with the physical environment and activities, tourism businesses, and other fellow tourists.

Measurement of Experience and the Emergence of New Research Method

One of the most difficult and crucial problems for any destination or organization looking to establish a sustainable competitive edge is understanding the components of tourist experiences in the destination and managing all clues during tourists’ interactions with destination service providers (Lemon & Verhoef, 2016; Becker & Jaakkola, 2020). Indeed, by understanding the key factors of the tourist experience, managers and marketers can respond to the needs of potential tourists and influence their behavior.

However, academics and practitioners suffer from measurement myopia because the tourist/customer experience is individualized, vague, and multifaceted. Our analysis of prior research generally brings forth the core tenants of measurement complexities and challenges as follows: these complexities include a lack of an accepted definition of the concept, the multiple elements that underpin the construct in itself, the dynamic nature of the context-specific variables, the intangible nature of tourism products and services, the highly subjective, unique, and personal reactions of tourists, and the number of tourism players and stakeholders that exist within the tourism system (Godovykh & Tasci, 2020b; Hwang & Seo, 2016; Gentile et al., 2007; Meyer & Schwager, 2007; Palmer, 2010; Bagdare & Jain, 2013; Gnoth & Matteucci, 2014).

One degree of complexity arises from the fact that tourists differ in their motivations, attitudes, travel behavior, and preferences (Kundampully et al., 2018). For example, Andersson (2007) and Morgan et al. (2009) affirm that the expected value of a particular experience may differ from that of others. Similarly, Hwang and Seo (2016) suggest that the consumption experience might easily change the affective attitude generated by a customer experience over time. Furthermore, Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi (1988) argue that some personal characteristics may influence customers to engage in “flow” experiences more frequently, more intensely, and longer than others. Similarly, Ritchie and Hudson (2009) argue that tourists bring different social and cultural backgrounds; that is, each tourist holds a specific personal value that filters through their lives and affects their decision to select a particular destination and tourism experience (Madrigal & Kahle, 1994). Furthermore, Milman et al. (2017) report that visitor experience dimensions might not be concrete or objective when visiting a mountain attraction. This may induce different attributes and yield different interpretations, which vary from one customer to another.

Other scholars refer to the broad spectrum of research methodologies that have emerged in the business field and might be adjusted to investigate the concept of customer experience in the tourism and hospitality industry. These research methodologies are heterogeneous to the extent that customer experience is measured either quantitatively or qualitatively using a wide range of measurement tools, such as structured surveys, direct observation, structured or unstructured interviews, and measurement scales. Nevertheless, most researchers fail to consider the drivers of customer experience in its totality, for example, in pre-, during-, and post-experience (Godovykh & Tasci, 2020a). For example, many scholars (Verhulst et al., 2020; Godovykh & Tasci, 2020b; Kuppelwieser & Klaus, 2019; Palmer, 2010) have questioned the substantial reliance on conventional and retrospective self-report metrics to capture the dynamic aspects of tourists’ emotional responses from past experiences and current customers’ feelings, ignoring the dynamic nature of affective dimensions of experience. Accordingly, this may not predict consumer behavior or service performance outcomes. In this context, the online experiment by Godovykh and Tasci (2020b) supports the significant impact of post-visit emotional stimulation on several aspects of customer loyalty, demonstrating that the dynamic nature of the customer experience can be altered even long after the customer journey.

On the other hand, many scholars note a shortage of innovation-related methods to identify the key elements of the tourist experience and the inability of many researchers to convey theory to research methods. For example, Palmer (2010) deems the inadequacy of survey design to assess the changing nature of affective and experiential dimensions of experience and, adding to the above, the concern that respondents’ answers might be misrepresented by their mood when answering questions (Skard et al., 2011); alternatively, it can be biased to the fact that they may not recall experienced emotions accurately.

In this regard, Fick and Ritchie (1991) advocate using additional qualitative measures to abstract critical dimensions and highlight that a strictly quantitative scale fails to consider those affective and hedonic factors “which contribute to the overall quality of the service experience” (p. 9). From this point of view, Ritchie and Hudson (2009) argue that qualitative methods are convenient for researchers. For example, Holbrook (2006) surmises that due to the context-specific and non-linear nature of experiences, qualitative methods are well-suited to assess customer experience. Godovykh and Tasci (2020b) draw attention to more psychophysiological measures of emotions, such as electrodermal activity and electromyography, electrocardiography, pupillometry, etc., to overcome the limitations of conventional self-report measures. Correspondingly, Verhulst et al. (2020) adopt neurophysiological metrics to measure emotions and their dynamic nature along with customer experience. Their experimental results show that neurophysiological measures may better delineate arousal levels throughout different customer experience phases, although not self-reported by participants. Thus, Verhulst et al. (2020) emphasize the critical stake of such measures to managers and service designers, as they depict how emotions vary across different touch-points and channels throughout the customer experience. Hence, such a measurement approach might underpin which moments better predict customer behavioral intentions and service performance outcomes. However, using neurophysiological methods for data analysis is more difficult and costly for analyzing; therefore, managers and academics may reject it (Verhulst et al., 2019).

Hwang and Seo (2016) propose innovative methodologies to approach customer experience and recommend using experience sampling, grid techniques, netnography, structured content analysis, and emphasizing a cultural perspective. According to Lugosi and Walls (2013), a wide range of approaches and methods have been provided to studies regarding destination experiences, such as autoethnographic, ethnographic, visual methods, netnographics, and other forms of Internet research approaches, along with more traditional survey-based and quantitative approaches (see also, Hosany & Gilbert, 2010; Oh et al., 2007; Raikkonen & Honkanen, 2013). In accordance with Godovykh and Tasci (2020a), capturing the fundamental nature of tourist experiences must call upon a mixture of different research approaches, including self-report methods, interview techniques, experience sampling methods, and psychophysiological metrics, to allow researchers to instantly measure components of the total experience and respondents’ reactions as they unfold before, during, and after the experience, as opposed to looking only at transactional touch-points. Kim and Seo (2022) confirm that a combination of such methodologies reflects the true nature of customer experience. Similarly, Klaus and Maklan (2013) assert that quality of service experience (EXQ) should be considered alongside more traditional metrics for measuring customer experience. For example, customer satisfaction and net promoter score are commonly known as better and direct predictors of customer behavior, and their applicability is relatively practical and cost-effective. In general terms, Verhulst et al. (2020) and Verhulst et al. (2019) posit combining neurophysiological measures with conventional metrics (e.g., self-report and behavioral measures), which may help to strengthen validity and reliability.

Last but not least, in light of the development of ICTs, Lugosi and Walls (2013) claim that hardwired technologies, such as mobile phones, GPS, and geographic information systems, have lately gained more ground in the investigation of daily tourist movements and activities in a location.

For example, Lee et al. (1994) employed a self-initiated tape-recording model (SITRM) to gather data. This technique requires participants to wear electronic pagers and carry self-report booklets in addition to a quantitative survey form, making researchers more willing to collect immediate participant experiences. In doing so, it minimizes memory decay and mood bias. Volo (2009) sheds light on the benefits of unobtrusive methods (e.g., sensory devices, use of GPS, travel diaries, and videos) as an alternative to access tourists’ emotions and feelings. Chen (2008) examined travelers’ mental representations of their family holiday experiences and actions using the Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique (ZMET). Supplementing this approach, Lugosi and Walls (2013) recommend adopting the actor-network theory (ANT) technique to examine travel destinations and visitor experiences through various players, actions, processes, and relationships as a complement to this strategy. Kim and Seo (2022) provide insight into new big data sources for gathering information on consumer experience.

An Integrated Conceptual Framework of Destination Experience

Tourist Experience is a complex and wide-ranging construct arising from a broader set of interactions with actors, stakeholders, and other tourists (Jaakola et al., 2015; Verhoef et al., 2009; Packer & Ballantyne, 2016; Kandampully et al., 2018; Meyer & Schwager, 2007). In light of the above discussion, many studies refer to the tourism experience as cumulative of each moment experienced by tourists during their journey, i.e., before the experience occurs, during the travel destination, and long after the tourist returns to their home environment. This ongoing process influences tourists’ future behavior and expectations of the next trip. To illustrate, Tung and Ritchie (2011) define an experience as “an individual’s subjective evaluation and undergoing (i.e., affective, cognitive, and behavioral) of events related to their tourist activities that begin before (i.e., planning and preparation), during (i.e., at the destination), and after the trip (i.e., recollection)” (p. 1369). Thus, different factors influencing tourist behavior can be illuminated during each stage of the experience process (Chen et al., 2014). Still, no prior holistic conceptual model exists in the literature that has examined all the elements that form the tourist experience in the destination.

Our approach to the present study is to build on the initial work of Godovykh and Tasci (2020a), Lugosi and Walls (2013), and Walls et al. (2011), an integrated conceptual framework of destination experience (see Figure 1). This conceptual framework portrays a process that covers components, processes, and stakeholders and depicts how they combine to form what is fundamentally the destination experience. It takes the tourist experience antecedents from a diverse body of literature and deals with tourist experience as a construct created due to tourist interactions with the physical and social environment of the destination along their journey (i.e., pre, during, and post-destination experience), creating, in consequence, opportunities for positive outcomes to tourists and destinations as well.

From a marketing perspective, this framework is suggested as a tool for decision-making to help DMOs and other tourism stakeholders to capture the holistic nature of the tourist experience in the destination setting. This may have practical implications for DMOs and other tourism stakeholders operating at the destination to fit their marketing practices to design a superior destination experience in response to the tourists’ needs and preferences. Practically, future research on tourist experience in destinations may pinpoint the specific roles of each stakeholder and the destination elements when considering the construction of the experience the tourists receive.

In doing so, we consider the definition proposed by Godovykh and Tasci (2020a), which is holistic from its perspective, to explain the concept of the destination experience. We include the social interaction dimension as a crucial element of the tourist experience in the definition mentioned above in order to widen the scope of experiential appeal and dwell on the implications of developing an integrated destination experience (see the works of Murphy, 2001; Milman, Zehrer, & Tasci, 2017; Bharwani & Jauhari, 2013).

In this perspective, a destination experience can be described as the total of tourists’ internal reactions (i.e., affective, cognitive, sensory, conative, and social) enhanced by external destination-related elements (e.g., destination stakeholders and managers, physical environment, tourism activities, local community, and other tourists) that occur within a series of dynamic interactions encountered directly or indirectly along the travel journey; during pre- destination experience, during the core of the experience and post-destination experience. As a result, it might be interpreted differently according to tourists’ characteristics, resulting in distinct consequences related to tourists and the visited destination. This proposed definition may be particularly constructive in explaining and measuring destination experience. It describes the holistic structure of experience components (e.g., cognitive, affective, sensorial, conative, and social) as tourist responses during their journey. Accordingly, this proposed definition is highly consistent with previous conceptualizations of other tourism and hospitality scholars (e.g., Packer and Ballantyne, 2016; Adhikari & Bhattacharya, 2016; Palmer, 2010; Verhoef et al., 2009).

Antecedents

In the tourism and hospitality industry, a number of antecedents have been offered as reliable predictors of customer experience, some of which have been argued to affect the quality, formation somewhat, and/or purchasing of experiences. This is due to the fact that each tourist’s experiences are unique based on their perceptions, consumption, and interpretation.

One set of antecedents is related to tourists’ characteristics in terms of socio-demographics (gender, age, nationality, occupation, salary), psychographic profile (personality and lifestyle), and culture (Godovykh & Tasci, 2020a; Adhikari & Bhattacharya 2016; Kim et al., 2012; Andersson, 2007; Hwang & Seo, 2016; Park & Santos, 2016; Morgan, Elbe, & de Esteban. 2009), level of familiarity, knowledge and previous experience background (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982; Finsterwalder & Kuppelwieser, 2011; Adhikari & Bhattacharya, 2016; Hwang & Seo, 2016), group characteristics and ethnic background (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982; Adhikari & Bhattacharya, 2016; Hwang & Seo, 2016; Heywood, 1987), tourists’ expectations (Arnould and Price, 1993; Ofir & Simonson, 2007), their preferences and purposes of trips (Adhikari et al., 2013; Hu & Ritchie, 1993; Wijaya et al., 2013), skills, abilities, and attitudes (Andersson, 2007), and tourist motivation and level of involvement (Prebensen et al., 2013). Such factors are critical drivers of one’s experience at the destination and post-purchase experience evaluation.

The other set of antecedents is concerned with destination-related features and situational characteristics. On the one hand, most researchers claim that destination attractions represent the core elements of tourism (Gunn, 1972). Furthermore, Buhalis (2000) reports that tourists’ selection of a particular destination is motivated by existing tourism attractions, accessibility, available packages, activities, and ancillary services. Similarly, Lin and Kuo (2016) suggest that the destination’s culture, history, religion, nature, events, architecture, hospitality, and other related variables likely influence the tourist experience. Also, Mossberg (2007) suggests many factors influencing the tourist experience, i.e., service personnel, physical environment, products/souvenirs, other tourists, and themes/stories. More broadly, Kim (2014) proposes ten factors to form memorable tourism experiences, including local culture, various activities, hospitality, infrastructure, environment, management, accessibility, quality of service, physiography, place attachment, and superstructure. From another perspective, marketing literature considers that tourist behavior depends heavily on the nature and quality of the tourism experience. For example, Gronroos (2001) highlights the significant determinants of service quality on customer satisfaction, behavioral intentions, and customer experience. On the other hand, situational characteristics include situational factors, such as the nature of the consumption context (Hwang & Seo, 2016) and macroeconomic and environmental factors (Grewal, Levy & Kumar, 2009; Hwang & Seo, 2016; Hudson & Ritchie, 2009) that likely influence the tourist experience in various contexts. The tourist and hospitality business as a whole has undoubtedly been impacted by several uncontrolled factors, such as natural disasters and climate change, financial crises, unfavorable exchange rates, and sanitary concerns.

Consequences

The concept of experience is central to customer behavior (Klaus & Maklan, 2013; Addis & Holbrook, 2001). Many studies have discussed the positive relationship between positive tourist experiences and behavioral intentions and attitudes to make inferences about the destination.

From a tourist perspective, as mentioned before, experiential responses have broadly been expressed as a combination of cognitive, emotional, behavioral, sensorial, and social reactions by a tourist as a result of active interactions and engagement with the destination’s physical environment, people, and tourism stakeholders. In this regard, the tourism experience is proposed to result in emotional responses such as fun, feelings, fantasies, entertainment, and refreshment (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982; Hirschman & Holbrook, 1982; Holbrook, 2000; Tynan & McKechnie, 2009; Hwang & Seo, 2016; Babin et al., 1994); cognitive responses such as knowledge, skills, learning, and memories (Oh et al. 2007; Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982; Pine & Gilmore, 1999; Lin & Kuo, 2016); conative responses such as practices, involvement, and engagement (Palmer, 2010; Schmitt, 1999; Unger & Kernan, 1983; Kim et al., 2012; Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004); sensorial responses such as taste, sound, smell, sight, and touch (Berry, Carbone, and Haeckel, 2002; Hudson & Ritchie, 2009); and perceived motivation (Pearce & Caltabiano, 1983; Oh et al., 2007). In a nutshell, when tourists value the experience, they begin valuing everything they feel, hear, see, and smell during their encounters with the destination.

From a destination perspective, DMOs can meet tourists’ expectations and sway their behavioral intentions in terms of satisfaction and behavioral loyalty intentions by having an understanding of how tourists evaluate and benefit from their experiences at the destination (Klaus & Maklan, 2013; Hosany & Gilbert, 2010). According to Oppermann (2000), travelers’ positive experiences at a destination may affect their desire to return and strengthen their ability to recommend the destination to friends and family. Hidalgo and Hernandez (2001) argue that experiences might be so powerful that tourists might become attached to the destination. These marketing outcomes are based on the importance of literature and research, emphasizing their weight as a consequence (Godovykh & Tasci, 2020b).

Figure 1: A conceptual framework of total destination experience

Conclusions, Implications, and Future Research Perspectives

This study aims to develop an integrated conceptual framework of tourist experiences in the destination based on the theoretical and conceptual understanding of tourism experience as an emerging topic in tourism research and consumer behavior. This framework will assist DMOs and policy-makers in broadening their understanding of the various factors and processes when considering the formation of the tourism experience. In doing so, DMOs and other tourism stakeholders can manage the prerequisite of enjoyable experiences for tourists, which will likely inspire tourists to return to the destination and recommend it to others.

The relevance of this research lies in the topicality of experience themes in tourism studies; the different insight that stems from this conceptual paper might have theoretical and managerial implications. From a theoretical perspective, this study aims to extend the conceptual and theoretical investigations of the experiential paradigm for destination management and marketing (Lugosi and Walls, 2013; King, 2002; Morgan, Elbe, and de Esteban, 2009). Therefore, the conceptual framework supplements the traditional framework of management through an experiential approach that considers the neglected experiential reactions of tourists (i.e., affective, conative, sensorial, and social responses) evoked as a result of dynamic interactions and active engagement with destination elements and stakeholders, alongside their destination visitation. From a management and marketing perspective, we believe that the conceptual framework of destination experience management may function as a guideline framework for destination managers and marketers to empirically study tourist experiences during the tourist journey in a destination. Hence, a clearer understanding of the relationship between specific tourist experiences, as they relate to the destination, can signal destination managers and marketers to establish a well-conceived marketing strategy to stage and deliver the desired tourism experience as part of a tourist value proposition.

Recently, intensive work has shed light on the co-creation experience process as critical to marketing strategies and differentiation in the general business literature. From this perspective, tourists are no longer considered passive recipients of a pre-conceived tourism product or experience but rather active partners in the co-creation experience design and management process (Lusch & Vargo, 2006; Lugosi and Walls, 2013; Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2003; Mossberg, 2007; Binkhorst & Den Dekker, 2009). Morgan, Elbe, and de Esteban (2009) imply that the delivery of co-creation tourist experiences can only be achieved through an effective combined effort between the private and public sectors. This is in line with previous research that considers tourist experiences derived from broader networks of actors, stakeholders, tourists, suppliers, host guests, brands, fellow tourists, and the local community (Jaakola et al., 2015; Verleye, 2015). Therefore, destination managers and marketers must focus on an eco-tourism system that includes destination managers and stakeholders in managing the co-creation destination experience. Therefore, further investigations are required to design co-creating experiential marketing strategies to assist tourists in co-constructing their desired tourism experience that provides the emotional state or pre-image they are looking to live in.

Last but not least, we propose empirical studies investigating causal linkages between different variables with related interactions, antecedents and consequences to fully leverage the relevance of the proposed conceptual framework.

Statements and Declarations

The author(s) reported no potential conflicts of interest.

The author(s) received no financial support for this article.

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The Rise of Experience Tourism and What It Means for the Leisure Industry

Table of Content

What is experiential purchasing, the rise of experience tourism, the take-away.

Your job in the travel and tourism industry is to help people travel to a far-off destination, enjoy that place for a few days, and then get back home, right? Not anymore. Now, you are providing a life-enhancing experience known as experience tourism – and the better the experience, the better you stand out from the horde of similar businesses. For your customers, it’s called experiential purchasing .

Experiential purchasing, whether a new kitchen floor or a trip to an exotic destination, is about a lot more than merely buying goods or services. Experiential purchases differ from material purchases in both objective and results. “[E]xperiential purchases serve the purpose of acquiring a life experience while material purchases serve the purpose of acquiring an object. Research has demonstrated that experiential purchases are associated with more happiness than material purchases .”

Really, the fact is nothing new, but the awareness and marketing of it in some areas are. This shift can be attributed to a wider affluence and the greater interconnectedness of our digital era. (But if you recall older ads for cars, clothes, and perfumes, you’ll see that some agencies have been on top of this phenomenon for a long time.) Just consider that kitchen floor.

When you have a new kitchen floor installed, you are not simply purchasing 253 brand-new, shiny floor tiles and their installation. You are, rather, interested in the benefits and the experience it provides. You have, for example, a beautiful new kitchen that makes you feel good every morning when you go in to fix breakfast, and you have a kitchen you are now proud to show off to family and friends. Basically, it makes your life better.

And it’s much the same with experience tourism.

In 2015, spending on leisure travel and tourism “ accounted for 76.6% of total global travel and tourism” and is expected to grow “more quickly than business travel spending over the next 10 years.” In addition, “the compound annual growth rate for the leisure segment is projected to grow at 4.2% compared to a 3.7% compound annual rate for the business travel segment.” Although factors such as greater disposable income and easier credit access have contributed to this growth, “the experiential consumer trend is a key factor.’’

For the majority of leisure travelers now, it’s all about the journey, not only the destination. Travelers want to connect with a place on an emotional level, and, as a result, it becomes much more than settling for a busy trip packed with a full itinerary in all the touristy hot spots. “For many, travel is seen as a way of understanding and appreciating alternative ways of life , learning new things about cultural and natural landscapes, and even as a means of self-discovery.”

Experience tourism is becoming the norm because consumers would rather spend their money on experiences and not on things. The emphasis now is on “ seeking out activities that appeal to niche personal interests ” rather than on “checking must-see sites and monuments off the to-do list.”

Booking and travel agencies today simply must offer more than a product. They must offer and promote life-enriching experiences –language lessons and cooking classes , riding the rapids, trekking to remote locations, swimming with sharks. The travel industry is evolving to meet and capitalize on this experiential purchasing trend, known as experience tourism. At Regiondo , a premier provider of booking software, we can provide the experiential travel booking options that are so vital to success today.

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IMAGES

Significado del turismo: aprenda sobre la definición de la industria
Tourism Experience PowerPoint and Google Slides Template
PPT
PPT
What is Tourism : Definitions of Tourism
Tourism Experience PowerPoint and Google Slides Template

VIDEO

Journey to the Pure Lands: A Visionary Odyssey
LIVE
LIVE
उदयन् भारतम् राइजिंग इंडिया
Experience का हिंदी में क्या मतलब होता है 🌻 Experience meaning in हिंदी 🙏
Work experience meaning in Hindi/Work experience का अर्थ या मतलब क्या होता है

COMMENTS

What Is Experiential Tourism?
Photo: ViktorHanacek/Pexels. "Experiential tourism" has become a popular term for travel marketers, but it can mean different things to different people. For some, experiential travel means ...
What Is Experiential Travel?
Experiential travel is also known as immersion travel. This is because people ( tourists) are fully immersing themselves in a particular culture or a certain place - whether that be a specific site or a general country. When travelling in this way, tourists will actively seek out and engage in things that make the place what it is.
Tourist Experience
Tourism. Shinji Yamashita, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2015. The Tourist Experience. There are two important theories of the tourist experience.The first is the theory developed by MacCannell (1976) that tourism itself consists of the search for 'authenticity.' This starts from Marx's observation that living in the modern world ...
Is experiential travel the next big trend?
Experiential travel usually delves deeper into a given destination, ensuring visitors can experience it as authentically as possible. As such, tours tend to focus on less-touristy spots. Since the ...
Experiential travel
Experiential travel, also known as immersion travel, is a form of tourism in which people focus on experiencing a country, city or particular place by actively and meaningfully engaging with its history, people, culture, food and environment. [1] It can often be transformative. [2] Therewith the concept is based on very similar mechanisms as for example experiential education, experiential ...
What is experiential tourism?
Equally, EXPERIENCE is about adapting and responding to the urgency of climate change and creating more sustainable options. The focus is on encouraging visitors to explore their local regions and tourists to travel off the beaten track. An experience should aim to stimulate the five senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste) and/or ...
Experiential Travel: Creating Memories, Not Checklists
Experiential travel is a travel method that has been talked about for decades but has become increasingly popular over the last few years. It's essentially a way of traveling that allows you to really dig deep into the local culture and fully experience every new place you visit. Experiential tourism is mostly focused on experiences as ...
Memorable tourism experience: A review and research agenda
The number of articles on memorable tourism experience has increased considerably since the first publication on the topic in 2012 (see Figure 2). From 2012 to 2017, research on memorable tourism experience remained in its infancy, with a notable growth in publications (39 articles) between 2018 and 2020.
Full article: Quality Tourism Experiences: Reviews, Reflections
INTRODUCTION. "Quality tourism experiences" is a term repeatedly used by destinations and organizations involved in tourism research, planning, policy, management, marketing and delivery. Its meaning is usually implicitly or tacitly assumed rather than defined (Jennings, 2006).
(PDF) The dimensions of the tourist experience
The tourist experience is a complicated psychological process. Providing a succinct. definition is a difficult task as this can encompass a complex variety of elements ( Jennings, 2006; Selstad ...
The Tourist Psychology and the Creation of Tourist Experiences
The tourist experience encompasses numerous elements; hence it is identified as a complex psychological process (Selstad, 2007).Researchers have identified tourist experience as a multistaged, a multi-influential, and a multi-outcome phenomenon (Clawson & Knetsch, 1966).The experience of tourism is an all-encompassing one that is built on top of an extremely practical one.
Tourism Experience and Tourism Design
A meaningful 'experience' is seen as the main factor effecting traveller satisfaction, engagement, and long-lasting memory. Over the past decades, acknowledging the important role of experience in tourism has resulted in a large number of interpretations and descriptions of the term 'experience' (Pine and Gilmore 1998; Lockwood 2010; Poulsson and Kale 2004).
Experiential Travel Explained: Players, Distribution Landsca
Experiential travel is a form of tourism that implies an active and meaningful engagement with a destination's culture, people, and/or environment to create unique, memorable experiences. It's the story about visiting new destinations, keeping off the beaten path, encountering authentic local experiences, and just doing something extraordinary.
Understanding memorable tourism experiences: A case study
studies, especially as soon as it became clear that tourism experiences mean value creation within the tourism industry. The tourism experience is a complex combination of especially subjective factors that shape the feelings and attitudes towards a tourist's visit. The tourism experience is related to satisfaction,
Tourism experiences: Core processes of memorable trips
1. Introduction. Products and services are no longer enough to generate economic prosperity. Therefore organizations and the hospitality industry use the experience as a management tool for differentiation (Pine & Gilmore, 2011).Experiences are subjective, highly personal and intangible phenomena (O'Dell & Billing, 2005), hence, difficult to define and to grasp their essence.
Understanding millennials' tourism experience: values and meaning to
The purpose of this paper is to better understand the tourism experience of millennials by connecting their value orientations to the meaning that they give to travel. In doing so, it also aims at discovering profiles of young tourists that can be targeted both now and in the future by tourism organisations.,A survey based on validated scales ...
Tourism
Tourism, the act and process of spending time away from home in pursuit of recreation, relaxation, and pleasure, while making use of the commercial provision of services. It is a product of modern social arrangements, beginning in western Europe in the 17th century, although it has antecedents in Classical antiquity.
(PDF) Tourist Experience in Destinations: Rethinking a Conceptual
Tourism experience is a genuine source of destination attractiveness and long-lasting competitive advantage. Understanding the main drivers of the tourist experience in destinations is a critical step toward managing and delivering a satisfying ... (2011) define an experience as "an individual's subjective evaluation and undergoing (i.e ...
The tourist experience: an experience of the frameworks of the tourist
1 "The notion of experience", explains Decroly, "holds […] of a potluck dinner, of which the researchers define the content according to their needs" (2015: 6). Indeed, in the research that deals with this notion, the tourist experience is at times defined as "a complicated psychological process" (Quinlan Cutler and Carmichael, 2010: 3) and at times as a "lived occurrence ...
Tourist Experience Challenges: A Holistic Approach
Tourist experience (TX) has been covered by many studies. However, a consensus on the topic still needs to be reached in terms of its dimensions, factors, evaluation methods, and evaluation models. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic severely affected the tourism sector, and the post-pandemic era could bring about new challenges and opportunities, such as the growing awareness of the need for ...
Understanding tourists' transformative experience: A systematic
Tourism has the potential to trigger lifelong changes through a transformative experience. However, existing tourists' transformative experience (TE) research has been criticized for lacking the embodied dimensions of transformative experiences leading to fragmented and contradictory views on what and where these experiences take place in the tourism context.
Tourist Experience in Destinations: Rethinking a Conceptual Framework
An Integrated Conceptual Framework of Destination Experience. Tourist Experience is a complex and wide-ranging construct arising from a broader set of interactions with actors, stakeholders, and other tourists (Jaakola et al., 2015; Verhoef et al., 2009; Packer & Ballantyne, 2016; Kandampully et al., 2018; Meyer & Schwager, 2007).
The Rise of Experience Tourism
They must offer and promote life-enriching experiences -language lessons and cooking classes, riding the rapids, trekking to remote locations, swimming with sharks. The travel industry is evolving to meet and capitalize on this experiential purchasing trend, known as experience tourism. At Regiondo, a premier provider of booking software, we ...
Quality Tourism Experiences: Reviews, Reflections, Research Agendas
INTRODUCTION. "Quality tourism experiences" is a term repeatedly used by destinations and organizations involved in tourism research, planning, policy, management, marketing and delivery. Its meaning is usually implicitly or tacitly assumed rather than defined (Jennings, 2006). Additionally, the assumed "taken for granted" meaning(s ...
Tourism and Culture
This webpage provides UN Tourism resources aimed at strengthening the dialogue between tourism and culture and an informed decision-making in the sphere of cultural tourism. It also promotes the exchange of good practices showcasing inclusive management systems and innovative cultural tourism experiences.. About Cultural Tourism. According to the definition adopted by the UN Tourism General ...

What Is Experiential Tourism?

Leveling the field

Can all smaller destinations benefit?

An emotional connection

A win for sustainability

Culinary tourism

An authentic image

Volunteer, see the world

Understanding the place

The future of experiential tourism

What is experiential travel?

Where did experiential travel come from?

Is experiential travel the next big trend?

Where are people going?

What kind of trips are being taken?

What about closer to home?

What if it’s not for me?

What are the benefits?

What do I need to know?

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Experiential Travel: Creating Memories, Not Checklists

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About the Author Anna Timbrook

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Tourism Experience and Tourism Design

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Experiential Travel Explained: Players, Distribution Landscape, and Opportunities

What is experiential travel?

Experiential travel ecosystem: business models, distribution, technologies, and representatives

Local service suppliers: building the base of the pyramid

Tour operators: providing turn-key services

Destination management companies: contracting local experiences

Focused T&A marketplaces: aggregating offerings for every taste

Travel agencies: complementing portfolio with T&A

Travel app developers: suggesting a focused solution

What to consider when starting an experiential travel business

Inventory management and integrations

Distribution

Online and mobile presence

Sustainability strategy

Understanding millennials’ tourism experience: values and meaning to travel as a key for identifying target clusters for youth (sustainable) tourism

Design/methodology/approach

Research limitations/implications

Practical implications

Originality/value

Youth tourism

Value orientations

Introduction

Theoretical and methodological section