Search results

This paper aims to stimulate the discussion in the fields of hospitality, tourism and leisure on what exactly constitutes “an experience” and how to measure it; the authors unpack the experience construct into its core constituent elements, namely, emotions.

The paper reviews insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience that define experiences as a fine-grained temporal succession of emotions that occur during an experiential episode. Limitations of current methods for measuring experiences are discussed, after which biometric and neuroscientific methods are reviewed that are optimally geared toward measuring emotions, as they occur during an experience with fine temporal detail.

An overview is presented of the available studies within the fields of hospitality, tourism and leisure that use these methodologies. These studies show that using these methodologies provides a fruitful methodological approach to measuring experiences in real time.

Companies are constantly seeking to create memorable experiences for their customers. The proposed research methodologies allow companies to get a more fine-grained image of what impacts customers over the course of their experience and to actively integrate the use of emotions into creating experiences, as emotions are key to making them memorable.

The paper sketches the contours of a rapidly emerging framework that unpacks memorable experiences into their constituent element – emotions. It is proposed that this will contribute to a deeper understanding of how consumers experience offerings in the hospitality, tourism and leisure industry.

To clarify inconsistencies in the emotion elicitation process and to suggest avenues for advancing emotion research, this study aims to conduct a systematic review of emotion research in the subject area of hospitality and tourism management.

This study analyzes 178 emotion-related articles published in 37 journals from 2004–2019 in the context of hospitality and tourism, providing a systematic synthesis of publication outlets and trajectories, research settings, the conceptualization of emotion, emotion measurement, classifications of antecedents and consequences.

Regarding the elicitation of emotions, many studies ignore the developments in emotion research in the mainstream discipline and still consider external stimuli as the direct causes of emotion. Numerous studies conceptualize customer emotion as positive or negative, which overlooks the nuances between discrete emotions with the same valence. Additionally, emotion scales are largely borrowed from psychology without considering the specific characteristics of the hospitality and tourism context. Methodologically, most studies take a single-measure lens with either a self-report, physiological or expression behavior measure.

The analysis of the literature highlights three main areas for future emotion studies in the hospitality and tourism context.

Previous reviews are narrative and only address specific areas of interest, rendering them incapable of explaining how a systematic literature identification process was conducted. The present systematic review is among the first to provide an overview of emotion studies in hospitality and tourism over a 15-year period. By drawing insights from appraisal theories of emotions, this review addresses common misunderstandings concerning the emotion elicitation process in the current hospitality and tourism literature.

This study proposed and tested a new conceptual model of memorable volunteer tourism experiences (MVTEs) by examining the effects of novelty, meaningfulness, experience co-creation and experience intensification on MVTEs. It also examined the relationships among MVTEs, psychological resilience (PR) and behavioural intention (BI), including that between novelty and BI.

The study modelled the proposed relationships by analysing data from an online survey using Amazon Mechanical Turk. In total, 241 responses were used in the data analysis.

This study extended the MVTE construct and included four key antecedents that influence tourists' MVTEs. The study also documented the predictive capability of MVTEs for PR and BI.

Volunteer tourism organisations should offer new and diverse activities for volunteer tourists, such as nature conservation, wildlife protection and construction.

This is the first study to examine the antecedents and outcomes of MVTEs using the stimuli–organism–response theory.

This study aims to contribute to the discussion on the interplay between music and destination advertising by exploring the roles of music in destination promotional videos (DPVs).

Eight focus group discussions on DPVs about Budapest (Hungary) were assessed through thematic analysis. Individuals’ interactions with and perceptions of advertising can be explored in depth through the former, whereas the latter allowed to identify the roles of music in DPVs.

Results show that music plays a very important role in DPVs in which it acts as a conveyor. Viewers associate a DPV’s musical elements and genre with a destination’s character. Here, the use and remix of traditional music was felt to be controversial because of its ability to communicate cultural identity. The music caught the audience’s attention, elicited emotions in them and made them think about the destination in question. An original music track can make a video memorable.

A convenience sample was used with international and Hungarian university students for the focus groups.

Music is a powerful conveyor of the particular characteristics of a destination and if the structural elements of music, such as tempo, rhythm and dynamics, are chosen appropriately, tourism marketers can create compelling promotional videos. By recognising that different audiences are attracted by different genres of music, marketers can target specific tourist segments. Furthermore, tourism marketers are advised to ask locals’ opinions about which music best represents their city’s cultural identity.

Through an understanding of the important role of music in DPVs, this study provides a novel insight into assessing young people’s cognitive and affective responses to music in promotional videos.