Experiences are the wholesome, new way to travel
Updated: Apr 9, 2019
Tourism Departments around the world are encouraging local businesses to engage with the trend and establish deeper relationships with visitors.
A new trend within the travel and tourism industry is designing meaningful experiences that give travelers a deeper connection with the people, the culture and the place they are visiting.
A meaningful travel experience engages the senses and satisfies the soul.
TripAdvisor 2018
Because experiential travel is such an inspiring trend, sites like TripAdvisor and Airbnb include experiences as part of their listings.
Historic and heritage experiences are the most popular, but food tours and cooking classes also rank at the top.
Guides and operators added 30,000 new experiences to TripAdvisor in 2017, increasing the number of available experiences and attractions by 50%.
Online Sharing
Tourism Departments around the world are encouraging local businesses to engage with the trend and establish deeper relationships with visitors.
The deeper of a connection the traveler experiences, the more likely he will want to share it with others and come back for more.
Designing Experiences
Firstly, lasting experiences must involve the five senses:
The more senses an experience engages, the more effective and memorable it can be. Smart shoeshine operators augment the smell of polish with crisp snaps of the cloth, scents and sounds that don’t make the shoes any shinier but do make the experience more engaging. Savvy hair stylists shampoo and apply lotions not simply because the styling requires it but because they add more tactile sensations to the customer experience. Similarly, grocery stores pipe bakery smells into the aisles, and some use light and sound to simulate thunderstorms when misting their produce.
They must also include an element of surprise...
Surprises can instantly stimulate a large variety of positive emotions. Their power has been strongly underlined in both tourism and game design.
…and for experiences to be successful, they must be focused.
Experiences must focus completely on the visitor and take a holistic approach to understanding and meeting visitor needs.
Engaging, not just entertaining.
According to The Experience Economy, experiences live within four realms: Entertainment, Education, Escapism, and Aesthetics, and those are the vehicles which deliver lasting experiences.
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