Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
applied extensively in tourism and wider consumer experience literature. Five
phases are identified:
•
Anticipation of the experience, which includes planning for a trip.
Anticipation may be more pleasurable than the actual trip experience.
•
Travel to the actual site of the experience, which may be very brief or
extended. Clawson and Knetsch recognize that some people may enjoy the
travel and suggest that this was more common in the past when people
travelled for sheer enjoyment.
•
On-site experiences. This is where most experiences research has focused
in the tourism literature.
•
Travel back. This is 'unlikely to be a duplicate of the travel to the site'
(p34). Little is known about the difference between the outward and
return trips which could be significant for slow travel.
•
Recollection. This may be more positive than the actual experience.
Recollection may be the starting point for planning or anticipation of
another experience.
There has also been a growing interest in the performance of tourism
(Bærenholdt et al, 2004). As Sheller and Urry (2004, p1) explain, places are
'performed', and 'many different mobilities inform tourism, shape the places
where tourism is performed, and drive the making and unmaking of tourist
destinations'.
While experiential perspectives have emerged in a variety of tourism and
leisure contexts, there is little work that examines travel as an experience both
during the journey to, or from, the destination and as a part of the destina-
tion experience (Lumsdon, 2006; Su and Wall, 2009). In most research, travel
is seen as a derived demand (Rhoden and Lumsdon, 2006); however, it is more
than that, it is integral to the tourist experience, and, in some instances, it
might be the main purpose (Lumsdon, 2006). Several authors allude to a travel
experience; for example, Cloke and Perkins (1998) explore the performative
desire of adventure tourists to be more than spectators and discuss their par-
ticipation in the landscape rather than passively travelling through. Such a
perspective fits well with slow travellers who are physically engaged with
travel, such as cyclists and walkers. One of the few studies to examine the
journey to and from the destination is Su and Wall's (2009) analysis of train
travellers from China to Tibet. The authors conclude that the train journey
was considered an important part of the overall holiday, and, for some peo-
ple, equally as important as the destination experience.
Pine and Gilmore (1999) report, in their business-focused model of con-
sumer experience, a matrix of experience realms based on two axes, one of
which focuses on the environmental relationship. This extends from
absorp-
tion
, where the experience simply occupies a person's attention, to
immersion
,
where participants become 'physically a part of the experience itself' (p31).
Their second axis focuses on level of participation from
passive,
where
customers do not directly affect or influence the performance, to
active,
where customers personally affect the performance. Their work uses a theatre
