Tourism experience management research: Emergence, evolution and future directions

Abstract

Purpose – The essence of tourism is the development and delivery of travel and visitation experiences. This paper aims to provide a quantitative and qualitative assessment of articles in major tourism journals in order to enhance our understanding of the tourism experience, with a special emphasis on the management issues associated with delivering these experiences to destination visitors. Design/methodology/approach – Several leading tourism journals were evaluated to identify the articles that focused on tourism experiences. Content analysis was used to determine the quantitative extent of the contributions and the qualitative nature of the articles published in each journal. Findings – Despite growth in the total number of articles published by each major journal, there was no substantial increase in experience-related papers. The findings suggest that, despite its fundamental importance, experience-related research remains under-represented in the tourism literature. Research limitations/implications...