Conceptualizations of tourism experience

This chapter displays and discusses different aspects of experience and how theories have conceptualized the different aspects. Experience can generally be defined as something that happens in peoples’ minds. It is determined by external stimuli and elaborated upon through the mental awareness that people have from earlier motivational experiences, mental needs and personal strategies. Experience is viewed from an economic, psychological and sociological, including marketing, perspective. ICT is an important factor in the current mode of experiencing. Another discussed facet in the chapter is how experience is related to tourism – in literature and practice. Tourists’ motives for experiencing may be hedonic and based on self-gratification, but there may also be a need for relaxation. Their motives must also be understood from their general Interest Regimes. Innovation of experiences is important for tourism firms and organizations, which must endeavor to provide a good total experience at the destination. That requires collaboration between tourist firms and organizations, some of which would be considered as outside the traditional tourist sector. The tourism firm cannot be sure of which experiences the tourists create for themselves. The tourist firms can only deliver experience propositions. They can provide experience elements that they think will create a specific experience in the tourists’ minds, but they cannot be sure that the intended experience will materialize.