Compiled from 10 years of research, with chapters contributed by experts in the field, we demonstrate how tourism will benefit from applying a new paradigm found in mainstream psychology, termed here the ‘Cognitive Wave’.

Tourism is facing a new paradigm that has been brought on by the introduction of experiences in the development, management, and promotion of tourism. Associating experiences to tourism destination and products allows tourists to relate to their vacations differently and helps to fuel a destination’s competitiveness and compliance with new needs and motivations that are being driven by the tourists. When properly design, managed, and developed, tourism experiences can contribute to the destination’s overall sustainability by maximining tourism’s positive impacts and fostering their spillover to local communities. Planning and Managing the Experience Economy in Tourism is an essential reference book that seeks to advance research on tourism experience as well as investigate how tourism experiences can create and increase tourism competitiveness. The book explores how the experience concept has evolved in the last decade, alongside the needs and motivations of consumers, and how it can be conceptualized, designed, managed, and implemented both at the tourism firm and destination levels. Delving further into concepts like creative tourism, destination attributes, and smart experiences, this book serves as a dynamic resource for travel agencies, tourism managers, tourism professionals, marketers, destination managers, government officials, policymakers, academicians, students, tourism officials, planners, and researchers.

Compiled from 10 years of research, with chapters contributed by experts in the field, we demonstrate how tourism will benefit from applying a new paradigm found in mainstream psychology, termed here the ‘Cognitive Wave’.

Annotation. Knowledge of consumer psychology and consumer behaviour in relation to tourism is valuable in determining the success of tourism and hospitality ventures. The book is an edited collection of papers from the 3rd Symposium on Consumer Psychology of Tourism, Hospitality and Leisure, held in Melbourne, Australia in January 2003. Themes covered by the papers include attitudes, emotions and information processing; motivation and learning; consumption systems; decision and choice; experience and satisfaction; market segmentation; attraction and loyalty; and image and interpretation.

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 1982, when my book The Social Psychology of Tourist Behaviour was published, it was almost possible to review academic research on tourism. In 1988, in a book of similar scale, such a review is almost impossible. The aim of the present volume is, therefore, to outline a body of work which adopts a consistent theme and method in exploring the topic of tourism. The approach is one of emphasising tourists' reactions and behaviours. The work is both behavioural and cognitive, and stems principally from applied traditions in social and environmental psychology. The examples of tourist studies tend to be Australian, British, and North American, principally because work elsewhere in psychological studies of tourists is less well organised. The nationality of the researchers should not, however, confine the application of the research findings, since while the examples may be specific the results are applicable in Brisbane, Bognor or Bogota. The book is intended not just for academic tourism researchers but also for all psychologists, so that they might note an understudied phenomenon within their discipline. For leisure researchers it is hoped that it will provide an opportunity for them to see developments parallel to their own research efforts in studying recreational behaviour. Is it also a volume for tourism managers and executives? In part it is, and the sections such readers might find of particular interest are Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 9.

The Social Psychology of Tourist Behaviour is a seven-chapter book that describes tourists, tourism, and tourist psychology. The book particularly explores economic, geographical, anthropological, and sociological studies of tourism. Subsequent chapters look into the social role of tourist; an approach to tourist motivation; social contact between tourists and hosts; and environmental settings of tourist behavior. The book will be useful for advanced undergraduates, graduate students and relevant practitioners, and in some cases for a rather broader public in the field of social psychology.