Routledge Handbook of the Tourist Experience offers a comprehensive synthesis of contemporary research on the tourist experience. It draws together multidisciplinary perspectives from leading tourism scholars to explore emergent tourist behaviours and motivations. This handbook provides up-to-date, critical discussions of established and emergent themes and issues related to the tourist experience from a primarily socio-cultural perspective. It opens with a detailed introduction which lays down the framework used to examine the dynamic parameters of the tourist experience. Organised into five thematic sections, chapters seek to build and enhance knowledge and understanding of the significance and meaning of diverse elements of the tourist experience. Section 1 conceptualises and understands the tourist experience through an exploration of conventional themes such as tourism as authentic and spiritual experience, as well as emerging themes such as tourism as an embodied experience. Section 2 investigates the new, developing tourist demands and motivations, and a growing interest in the travel career. Section 3 considers the significance, motives, practices and experiences of different types of tourists and their roles such as the tourist as photographer. Section 4 discusses the relevance of ‘place’ to the tourist experience by exploring the relationship between tourism and place. The last section, Section 5, scrutinises the role of the tourist in creating their experiences through themes such as ‘transformations in the tourist role’ from passive receiver of experiences to co-creator of experiences, and ‘external mediators in creating tourist experiences'. This handbook is the first to fill a notable gap in the tourism literature and collate within a single volume critical insights into the diverse elements of the tourist experience today. It will be of key interest to academics and students across the fields of tourism, hospitality management, geography, marketing and consumer behaviour.

People do not buy products or even services; they purchase the total experience that the product or service provides. This book brings together established and emerging international scholars to provide systematic reviews and illustrative cases drawn from tourism, leisure, hospitality, sport and event contexts. The book provides a useful framework for focusing the goals and associated methodologies of future research efforts and for implementing the results of these efforts.

This significant and timely volume aims to provide a focused analysis into tourist experiences that reflect their ever-increasing diversity and complexity, and their significance and meaning to tourists themselves. Written by leading international scholars, it offers new insight into emergent behaviours, motivations and sought meanings on the part of tourists based on five contemporary themes determined by current research activity in tourism experience:conceptualization of tourist experience; dark tourism experiences; the relationship between motivation and the contemporary tourist experience; the manner in which tourist experience can be influenced and enhanced by place; and how managers and suppliers can make a significant contribution to the tourist experience. The book critically explores these experiences from multidisciplinary perspectives and includes case studies from wide range of geographical regions. By analyzing these contemporary tourist experiences, the book will provide further understanding of the consumption of tourism.

This book provides students with a concise and practical guide that presents key understandings of the tourist experience and provides strategic guidance on how to develop an impactful and memorable experience. Chapters follow the path of the tourist journey, firstly exploring consumer behaviour, the decision-making process and the tourist’s need for escape, and providing insights into the strategic implications of consumer behaviour and the concept of immersion in tourism. Subsequent chapters look at the impact of experiences; consider trends in tourism experience such as wellness, sustainability, authenticity and fantasy; and provide experience design models. The final chapter offers a unique ten-step approach to designing impactful and memorable tourist experiences. Highly practical and engaging, this book is packed full of case studies and examples, from forest bathing in Finland to truffle hunting in Italy, as well as tools and exercises to guide the design process. This book offers students a full understanding of how the experience is lived from the tourist perspective, how tourism providers can manage that process and how to develop successful experimental marketing interventions. This is essential reading for all tourism students and future tourism managers.

Traditionally, tourism media has referred to the image of destinations constructed through media texts such as brochures and postcards, with increasing attention towards other mediascapes such as films and television. Yet, with prolific advancements in technologies of media communication, such traditional formats have experienced a shift in the productive and consumptive practices through which they come into being. The possibilities of production and subsequent consumption are unequivocally changing the ways in which tourists imagine, understand and engage with destinations. This book therefore explores the role of tourism media and mediating practices in the development of non-linear processes of communication and understanding as both producers and consumers come together to negotiate the tourist experience. In varying ways it examines the emergent relationships and connections between media practices and tourism practices, everyday experiences and encounters of place. Collectively, the authors in this book address a range of media and technologies from brochures, television, video and film to mediated virtual spaces, such as e-brochures, Internet cultures, social networks, and Google Earth. In doing so, the book highlights the continued significance of media in tourism contexts; recognising both traditional and newer technologies, and the non-linear, continuous cycle of mediated representations and experiences.

To consume tourism is to consume experiences. An understanding of the ways in which tourists experience the places and people they visit is therefore fundamental to the study of the consumption of tourism. Consequently, it is not surprising that attention has long been paid in the tourism literature to particular perspectives on the tourist experience, including demand factors, tourist motivation, typologies of tourists and issues related to authenticity, commodification, image and perception. However, as tourism has continued to expand in both scale and scope, and as tourists’ needs and expectations have become more diverse and complex in response to transformations in the dynamic socio-cultural world of tourism, so too have tourist experiences. Tourist Experience provides a focused analysis into tourist experiences that reflect their ever-increasing diversity and complexity, and their significance and meaning to tourists themselves. Written by leading international scholars, it offers new insights into emergent behaviours, motivations and sought meanings on the part of tourists based on five contemporary themes determined by current research activity in tourism experience: dark tourism experiences, experiencing poor places, sport tourism experiences, writing the tourist experience and researching tourist experiences: methodological approaches. The book critically explores these experiences from multidisciplinary perspectives and includes case studies from a wide range of geographical regions. By analyzing these contemporary tourist experiences, the book will provide further understanding of the consumption of tourism.

In The Tourist Experience, Chris Ryan presents a collection of essays which explore past attitudes towards holidays, motivations for holidays, and the nature of holiday locations and events.

Most discussion of visitor experiences uses a behavioural or managerial approach where the way the visitor thinks is ignored - it's a black box. Visitor Experience Design is the first book of its kind to examine best practice in creating and delivering exciting and memorable travel and visitation experiences from a cognitive psychological perspective - it opens the black box. The chapters draw on recent findings from cognitive psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience to provide a basis for a better understanding of the antecedents of a memorable experience. Tourism, hospitality and event managers seek to provide WOW experiences to their visitors through better design and management.This book encourages the discussion of different facets of experience design such as emotions, attentions, sensations, learning, the process of co-creation and experiential stimuli design. It will be of interest to tourism researchers and postgraduate students studying tourism management, marketing and product design.

In this classic analysis of travel and sightseeing, author Dean MacCannell brings social scientific understandings to bear on tourism in the postindustrial age, during which the middle class has acquired leisure time for international travel. In The Tourist—now with a new introduction framing it as part of a broader contemporary social and cultural analysis—the author examines notions of authenticity, high and low culture, and the construction of social reality around tourism.

The marketing of a destination necessitates strategic planning, decision making, and organization. Effective positioning will result in a strong brand that develops an emotional and productive two-way relationship. Notwithstanding, destination managers should possess relevant knowledge and understanding on traditional and contemporary marketing channels to better engage with prospective visitors. Destination Management and Marketing: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice focuses on utilizing destination branding and content marketing for sustainable growth and competitive advantage within the tourism and hospitality industry, including tools and techniques for travel branding and best practices for better tourism management strategies. Highlighting a range of topics such as service quality, sustainable tourism, and competitiveness model, this publication is an ideal reference source for government officials, travel agencies, advertisers, marketers, tour directors, hotel managers, restaurateurs, industry professionals including those within the hotel, leisure, transportation, and theme park sectors, policymakers, practitioners, academicians, researchers, and students.