Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 3.1
Dramatizing for enhanced experience value through interactions
Experience
value
Dramaturgy
Structure (staging)
Interaction (co-creation)
Content (involvement story)
Emotional
Introduction:
welcome - focusing
on good feelings
Relationships: host and
guest, and between
guests, socialization
Involvement to boost excitement
and other valued feelings
Social
Facilitating: ensuring
the right atmosphere,
valued encounters,
group activities
Linking customers in
networks and loyalty
programmes
Partaking, interest, involvement
and surprises - focusing on the
tourist as part of a certain group
Quality/
facilitation
Control, quality and
systems
Follow up, controls,
asking for feedback
Ensuring standards, information
and comparing quality levels
Price/value for
money
Comparing and
relating information
Loyalty programmes,
price policy, guarantees,
self-service
Value for money, comparing
prices
Epistemic
value
Presenting news,
focus on learning
activities
Communicating
authentic and learning
activities - the newness
Learning something new,
authenticity and novelty - focus
on tourist knowledge and skills
Interaction and value creation in tourism are core issues in terms of attracting the right
customers and making their trip valuable and worthwhile. Thus, the focus of interaction in
tourism is gradually shifting towards integrating the tourist as a co-creator to build value-in-use,
before, during and after a journey. The tourism companies and destinations therefore have to put
their efforts into attracting, facilitating and involving tourists in partaking in value creation in the
whole process of a tourist experience. In particular, the fi rm needs to be active and creative in
order to motivate the customer to engage in value creation before the journey takes place. A
particular challenge is the fact that the destination, the place of enjoyment, cannot physically be
transported to the customer. Accordingly, the fi rm has to propose value enhancement situations,
i.e. staging value propositions, not only during the trip, but also before and after the journey. The
tourist continues to evaluate and remember the experience after the journey, sometimes for a
very long time. The company should therefore ensure that the customer has something valuable
to recall and remember, and to tell others when arriving back home. People tend to travel for a
variety of motives (body- and mind-related motives), but it seems that they are more likely to
tell others about their mind-related experiences, such as learning and authentic experiences
(Prebensen
et al
. 2010).
Based on theoretical frameworks, such as customers' actions (Holt 1995), customers' value
perceptions (Holbrook 1999; Sheth
et al
. 1991) and the dramaturgy metaphor (Goffman 1959),
the present work focuses on how tourism fi rms, by acknowledging what tourists value before,
during and after a journey, may develop, facilitate and accommodate processes for the tourist to
partake in value creation and co-creation processes through dramatizing interaction processes.
Consequently, a dramaturgical framework is used to help fi rms provide tourists with the right
motivation, involvement and skills to partake in and create valuable experiences in the tourism
drama. The chapter outlines and exemplifi es how tourist companies can enhance experience
value for the tourist by dramatizing the experience value throughout the whole experience. As
researchers outline (e.g.Vargo and Lusch 2004; Grönroos 2008) customers are the real creators of
