Routledge Handbook of the Tourist Experience offers a comprehensive synthesis of contemporary research on the tourist experience. It draws together multidisciplinary perspectives from leading tourism scholars to explore emergent tourist behaviours and motivations. This handbook provides up-to-date, critical discussions of established and emergent themes and issues related to the tourist experience from a primarily socio-cultural perspective. It opens with a detailed introduction which lays down the framework used to examine the dynamic parameters of the tourist experience. Organised into five thematic sections, chapters seek to build and enhance knowledge and understanding of the significance and meaning of diverse elements of the tourist experience. Section 1 conceptualises and understands the tourist experience through an exploration of conventional themes such as tourism as authentic and spiritual experience, as well as emerging themes such as tourism as an embodied experience. Section 2 investigates the new, developing tourist demands and motivations, and a growing interest in the travel career. Section 3 considers the significance, motives, practices and experiences of different types of tourists and their roles such as the tourist as photographer. Section 4 discusses the relevance of ‘place’ to the tourist experience by exploring the relationship between tourism and place. The last section, Section 5, scrutinises the role of the tourist in creating their experiences through themes such as ‘transformations in the tourist role’ from passive receiver of experiences to co-creator of experiences, and ‘external mediators in creating tourist experiences'. This handbook is the first to fill a notable gap in the tourism literature and collate within a single volume critical insights into the diverse elements of the tourist experience today. It will be of key interest to academics and students across the fields of tourism, hospitality management, geography, marketing and consumer behaviour.

To consume tourism is to consume experiences. An understanding of the ways in which tourists experience the places and people they visit is therefore fundamental to the study of the consumption of tourism. Consequently, it is not surprising that attention has long been paid in the tourism literature to particular perspectives on the tourist experience, including demand factors, tourist motivation, typologies of tourists and issues related to authenticity, commodification, image and perception. However, as tourism has continued to expand in both scale and scope, and as tourists’ needs and expectations have become more diverse and complex in response to transformations in the dynamic socio-cultural world of tourism, so too have tourist experiences. Tourist Experience provides a focused analysis into tourist experiences that reflect their ever-increasing diversity and complexity, and their significance and meaning to tourists themselves. Written by leading international scholars, it offers new insights into emergent behaviours, motivations and sought meanings on the part of tourists based on five contemporary themes determined by current research activity in tourism experience: dark tourism experiences, experiencing poor places, sport tourism experiences, writing the tourist experience and researching tourist experiences: methodological approaches. The book critically explores these experiences from multidisciplinary perspectives and includes case studies from a wide range of geographical regions. By analyzing these contemporary tourist experiences, the book will provide further understanding of the consumption of tourism.

Offering an overview of current issues around design, marketing and management of experiences from the tourist perspective, this comprehensive Handbook critically reviews the key debates and developments within the field. Empirical chapters by international contributors explore a range of perspectives, challenges, opportunities for future research and best managerial practices.

This significant and timely volume aims to provide a focused analysis into tourist experiences that reflect their ever-increasing diversity and complexity, and their significance and meaning to tourists themselves. Written by leading international scholars, it offers new insight into emergent behaviours, motivations and sought meanings on the part of tourists based on five contemporary themes determined by current research activity in tourism experience:conceptualization of tourist experience; dark tourism experiences; the relationship between motivation and the contemporary tourist experience; the manner in which tourist experience can be influenced and enhanced by place; and how managers and suppliers can make a significant contribution to the tourist experience. The book critically explores these experiences from multidisciplinary perspectives and includes case studies from wide range of geographical regions. By analyzing these contemporary tourist experiences, the book will provide further understanding of the consumption of tourism.

This title was first published in 2002: This volume follows on from the tradition of humanistic geography to examine tourism from an experiential perspective - examining the experience of the tourists themsleves. By analyzing theories on tourism from anthropology, psychology and culural tourism, it aims to further the geographical debates on interactions which occur in tourism. The text offers a geographical approach which examines how the resulting experience of tourism can reveal something of our relationship with places in general, and also about ourselves.

What makes life worth living? Many people would argue that it is fulfilling experiences. These experiences are characterised by feelings of joy and pleasure, positive relationships and a sense of engagement, meaning and achievement. Tourism is arguably one of the largest self-initiated commercial interventions to promote well being and happiness on the global scale but yet there is absence in the literature on the topic of fulfilling tourist experiences from psychological perspectives. Drawing on insights and theories from the research field of positive psychology (the study of well being), this is the first edited book to evaluate tourist experiences from positive psychology perspectives. The volume addresses the important topic of fulfilment through the lens of the world’s largest social global phenomenon tourism. In doing so, the book refreshes and challenges some aspects of tourist behaviour research. The chapters are grouped under three broad sections which reflect a range of positive psychological outcomes that personal holiday experiences can produce, namely; happiness and humour; meaning and self-actualisation and health and restoration. The book critically explores these fulfilling experiences from interdisciplinary perspectives and includes research studies from wide range of geographical regions. By analysing the contemporary fulfilling tourist experiences the book will provide further understanding of tourist behaviour and experience. Written by leading academics this significant volume will appeal to those interested in Tourism and Positive Psychology.

People do not buy products or even services; they purchase the total experience that the product or service provides. This book brings together established and emerging international scholars to provide systematic reviews and illustrative cases drawn from tourism, leisure, hospitality, sport and event contexts. The book provides a useful framework for focusing the goals and associated methodologies of future research efforts and for implementing the results of these efforts.