A Practical Guide to Managing Tourist Experiences

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.