Researching destination experiences: Themes, perspectives and challenges

Abstract

This paper reviews and synthesises multidisciplinary research on destination experiences and outlines some of the future challenges facing researchers and practitioners. The paper is split into four main parts: the first reviews social scientific conceptualisations of consumption and consumer experiences; the second considers marketing and management perspectives; and the third focuses specifically on consumption experiences in destination settings. The final part examines the challenges for future research and identifies three critical sets of issues: the first concerns matters of scale and focus when conceptualising and examining destination experiences; the second deals with the various and seemingly incompatible conceptual and methodological approaches required to explore destination experiences; and the third concerns the increasing necessity to recognise complexity in terms of understanding the various stakeholders, processes and practices and their interactions, which shape destination experiences.

Identification of common city characteristics influencing room occupancy

“…The geographic and political location of the country where the city is located holds significant influence, with several branches highlighting that depends if the city resides in the European Union, in the rest of Europe, or in the rest of the world. This is corroborated by Lugosi and Walls (2013), as the country and city's investments in promoting tourism has a positive effect on the success of attracting visitors. The rest of Europe (apart from European Union countries)…”

Multisensory Experiences of Italian Tourists in Rural Transylvania

“…The researches result contours that the most frequent descriptions contains subjective elements, mostly related to the appreciation of traditions and intangible heritage, which touched the soul of the visitors and generated different experiences from the urban life, in the company of people who preserved the unique values and identity of these places. As stated by Lugosi and Walls (2013), the different stakeholders and the (in)compatibility of their perspectives will shape destination experience research in the future.…”

Collaborative network organisations as platform for value co-creation in tourism destinations: an analysis of Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil

“…In this regard, note that a destination is a systemic relation between a multitude of components (Timón, 2004), where the territory becomes a part of the product through the tourism process that occurs inside it. The multitude of tourism experiences should be studied from multi-method, multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder approaches to generate tourism development towards an economic, social and environmentally sustainable model (Lugosi and Walls, 2013). In accordance to that, Saraniemi and Kylänen (2011) suggest to use the cultural approach to tourism destinations in order to go beyond the economic viewpoint.…”