TMARKPROMO credits to Mr. Richard Aquino

1. The Tourist Experience
Theories & Marketing Implications
Richard S. Aquino, MITM
Instructor - TMARKPROMO

2. Presentation Outline
• Welcome to the Experience Economy
• Defining tourist experience
• How do tourists create their experiences?

3. Welcome to the Experience Economy
As goods and services become commodified, the
customer experiences that companies create
will matter most (Pine & Gilmore, 1998).
The progression of economic value demands that
businesses design engaging experiences that
command a fee.

4. Progression of Economic Value

5. Progression of Economic Value
4 Stages:
1. Move from raw materials to
2.make products to
3.deliver services to
4.stage experiences

6. Progression of Economic Value (example)

7. Service vs. Experience
• An experience is not an amorphous construct; it
is as real an offering as any service, good, or
commodity.
• To realize the full benefit of staging experiences,
however, businesses must deliberately design
engaging experiences that command a fee.

8. Taxi (TV Show)
• the episode of the old television show Taxi in which Iggy, a
usually atrocious (but fun-loving) cab driver, decided to
become the best taxi driver in the world. He served
sandwiches and drinks, conducted tours of the city, and even
sang Frank Sinatra tunes. By engaging passengers in a way
that turned an ordinary cab ride into a memorable event, Iggy
created something else entirely a distinct economic offering.
The experience of riding in his cab was more valuable to his
customers than the service of being transported by the cab
and in the TV show, at least, Iggy's customers happily
responded by giving bigger tips. By asking to go around the
block again, one patron even paid more for poorer service just
to prolong his enjoyment. The service Iggy provided-taxi
transportation was simply the stage for the experience that he
was really selling.

9. Service vs. Experience
• An experience occurs 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.
• Commodities are fungible, goods tangible,
services intangible, and experiences memorable.

10. Service vs. Experience
• While prior economic offerings - commodities,
goods, and services are external to the buyer,
experiences are inherently personal, existing
only in the mind of an individual who has been
engaged on an emotional, physical, intellectual,
or even spiritual level. Thus, no two people can
have the same experience, because each
experience derives from the interaction between
the staged event (like a theatrical play) and the
individual's state of mind.

11. Economic Distinctions

12. Experience Economy Concepts
How to stage experiences that sell?
Pine and Gilmore suggest that marketers be
guided by the following concepts that influence
an experience:
• Customer participation (passive vs active)
• Connection (absorption vs immersion)
These form the four characteristics of a
memorable experience.

13. Realms of experience

14. Realms of experience (Entertainment)
• The experience that majority of people think of
• Passive participation, absorption
• Example: watching TV, attending a concert

15. Realms of experience (Educational)
• Participants are in the absorption stage but
requires them to have active participation rather
than passive.
• Example: attending a class

16. Realms of experience (Escapist)
• Can ‘amuse’ like entertainment and ‘teach’ like
educational experience
• But requires participants to immerse themselves
• Example: Acting in a play, cooking lessons,
basket weaving lessons, guided tour of the Grand
Canyon

17. Realms of experience (Aesthetic)
• Requires participants to immerse themselves
with passive participation
• Example: Unguided tour/sightseeing Grand
Canyon

18. Integrating these realms create the ideal customer
experience.

19. The tourist experience
• The tourism industry is a ‘marketplace of
experience’ (Volo, 2009)
• Experiences are unique from the tangible
aspects and other services that form a tourism
product.
• Experiences are mental, spiritual and
physiological outcomes resulting from on-site
recreation engagements (Schaensel & McIntosh,
2000).
• A tourism product is an ‘experience’.

20. How are experiences created?
Although marketers pre-program the sites that
can be seen and activities that a tourist can
perform, tourist experiences are shaped in the
tourists’ minds.

21. Example of tourist experience creation & outcomes in a
geotourism context (Aquino et al., in review)

22. Tourist experience creation
Tourist gaze (Urry, 1990)
• Whenever tourists travel, they gaze upon objects
and scenery in the destination.
• ‘gaze’ pertains to seeing things
• The gaze is shaped by meanings that tourists
attached to what they witness

23. Tourist experience creation
Tourist performance (Edensor, 2000)
• Urry’s visual gaze in unreflexive to
understanding multi-faceted destinations
• Destinations are ‘stages’ where tourists perform;
these stages are regulated and pre-determined
• Tourist performance integrates a physical
element with the cognitive properties of the gaze

24. Tourist experience creation
Embodied performance (Larsen & Urry, 2011)
• Gazing and performing should dance together rather
than stare at each other from a distance
• The moving body employs ‘multiple gazes’ when
encountering tourist objects

25. Tourist experience creation
Social relations
• The stage where tourists perform is shared with
other ‘actors’ (e.g. service providers, other
tourists) (Edensor, 2000)
• ‘Social relations’ in tourist performances; a
communal performance

26. Tourist experience creation
Psychological process (Larsen, 2007)
• Tourists use their sensation, perception &
cognition (Volo, 2009)
• Tourist use their internal responses (e.g.
imagination and emotions)
• Tourists react to stimuli differently from each
other
• Thus, tourist experiences are ‘subjective’.

27. Discussion question
• How can marketers use the experience economy
concepts when designing tourism products and
experiences?

28. Quiz next meeting