Addressing Gaps in Understanding the Tourist Experience: Towards an Integrated Perspective

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Customer experience in general, is a complex construct, and difficult to define as it is characterised by the emotional and affective state of the customer (Zehrer, 2009). While it has attracted considerable attention in the literature (Gnoth et al. 2009; Atilgan et al. 2003; Aho, 2001,), it is widely accepted that the area of experience creation and design lacks a significant theoretical basis (Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons, 2000; Pullman and Gross, 2003; Stuart and Tax, 2004) and as yet a prescriptive focus for tourism enterprises (Gupta and Vajic, 2000). The provision of an attractive value proposition for tourism enterprises is dependent on the tourist experience (Zehrer, 2009); consequently, the lack of insight into the nature of this experience limits the enterprises‟ ability to develop an effective experience management strategy. Indeed, there is an imbalance in the experience literature as existing work in the area of experiential tourism services has dealt primarily with the cha

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