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The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework for understanding tourist experiences based on concepts from evolutionary, cognitive and social psychology. This framework integrates concepts from mindfulness theory and story-telling theory and seeks to better explain the nature of tourist experiences.

The paper reviews some core conceptual approaches to understanding the concept of experience as a psychological driver in tourism. It will then set a series of research questions and explore some of these through a qualitative analysis of tourist stories and experiences in two South African destinations – Kruger National Park and Soweto. This analysis combines participant observation, content analysis of promotional literature and tourist blogs.

Evidence supports a set of propositions derived from integrating mindfulness and storytelling theory. Stories do play a significant role in encouraging mindful visitors and supporting more positive tourist experiences.

This paper combines two different approaches to understanding tourist experiences to create a new framework for understanding the cognitive processes involved in tourist experiences and how these link to outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to speculate how recent and emerging trends in information and communication technology (ICT) could change the way tourism businesses and organizations communicate with and manage their guests.

This paper applies elements of futures and design thinking to analyze current tourism management practices and identify critical touchpoints that link tourist decisions to management strategies.

Fictional travel stories were used to identify and analyze how technology might affect tourism through five touchpoints– choice, connection, co-creation, customization and compliance. These stories were analyzed to identify changing forces and suggest potential paradigm shifts that tourism managers need to consider. These included increasingly complex content, the importance of compatible connections, and the critical role of coordination and cooperation in future tourism systems.

While there have been numerous discussions of how tourists and tourism businesses access and use technology, there is little evidence of scholars and practitioners applying formal futures thinking to ICT and tourism. This paper used design thinking and stories to predict and illustrate ways in which technology could be embedded into tourism experiences and services. It suggests that technology can, and probably will, fundamentally change the way in which we manage tourists and their experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the rise of stories in tourism practice, identify the forces that are supporting and directing this story turn and argue for tourism researchers to pay greater attention to this new development.

This paper is based on a general review of academic and professional literature on marketing practice and experience design in tourism and an audit of destination marketing materials using story or story telling in their campaigns.

This paper identifies three forces supporting a story turn in tourism: building on the experiential approach to tourism; the rise of mobile social media, user generated content and gamification; and the Asian Wave in tourism.

This paper identifies a story turn in current tourism practice and reviews the increasing awareness of the value of stories in psychology, sociology and anthropology research, to suggest how this story turn may influence the nature of both tourism practice and research in the future.

Dark tourism has a very long heritage. Compared to the rest of the world, dark tourism in Slovenia is very poorly developed. The theme is therefore a novelty in Slovenia as well as in the Slovenian professional and scientific literature. The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe dark stories of two small cities – Brežice and Krško – in Slovenia.

The paper brings ethnographical approach based on the in-depth literature analysis, existing documentation in museums (old newspapers articles, photographs) and fieldwork in Brežice and Krško which contained the method of unstructured interviews with four curators in The Posavje Museum Brežice, The City Museum of Krško and The National Museum of Contemporary History – Brestanica Branch as well as the method of observation with participation in a guided tour of Posavje “witches” in The City Museum of Krško and The Brežice Cemetery. The information for the research was also obtained by conducting ten unstructured interviews with the residents who live nearby “dark places” or are still connected to them.

The paper provides practical results as 14 dark stories related to the castles, wars, accidents, murders, paranormal activities and witchcraft were found. These stories could be incorporated into dark tourism.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. The results refer to a particular area of research.

The paper includes implications for the development of a new dark tourism product on a basis of dark stories found in the research area.

The paper fulfills need to identify and study dark stories that can be integrated in dark tourism in Slovenia.

The purpose of this paper is to address the contemporary interest in participatory destination branding. Because of a lack of empirical and evaluative studies on this form of branding, the current case study examines a volunteer resident ambassador program, which began as part of Aarhus, Denmark’s year as a European City of Culture in 2017, and has become permanent because of its success.

The case study is based on official document analyses, participant observations of program activities, and interviews with volunteer program managers and volunteers who greet cruise ship tourists.

Findings indicate that while the two managers and the volunteers all report on three volunteer roles – personal hosts, place promoters and providers of information – they prioritize and understand the roles differently. Similarly, the volunteers’ encounters with visitors are all unique, and this inevitably results in the conveyance of unruly and incidental destination images.

This unruliness is not necessarily problematic: despite the wide-spread interest in the management of participative branding initiatives, it is seen to be the lack of explicit brand-centered management that fosters the program’s positive outcomes, including authentic and pleasant interactions between volunteers and tourists, which, in turn, result in positive attitudes amongst tourists toward their visit.

This study discovers that positive participatory destination branding outcomes depend on managers respecting the ambassadors’ coveted autonomy, and letting go of control of a destination brand. Because of the growing hostility toward mass tourism in cities internationally, it is also noted that a resident ambassador program’s success is expected to depend on residents’ positive attitudes toward tourists.

Although tourist experience has been considerably studied, there is a dearth of research on spiritual cognitive stages in tourism literature. Therefore, this paper aims to reveal the dimensions of the tourist experience based on numinosity context.

A qualitative method is used by the etic and emic approach with an ethnographic background. After observation and active participation in the field, data was collected from 44 participants with semi-structured interviews to reveal their numinous experiences dimensions.

The results show that numinous experience in three categories (mysterium, tremendum and fascinans) can be evaluated in seven dimensions including history, story, awe, reverence, atmosphere, place-based and nature-based dimensions.

This study provides managerial and practical implications for tourism stakeholders to be aware of numinous experiences and to better manage sacred places.

This paper offers a novel tourist experience design in the numinous context to the best of the authors’ knowledge.

This paper aims to enrich discussion on pilgrimage tourism by analyzing motivations for visiting Sissinghurst, and of essential components of the pilgrimage experience.

The paper utilizes data triangulation and the application of two powerful Jungian archetypes to decode motivations to manage and to participate in a journey to an iconic pilgrimage site (Sigginghurst Castle Garden, in Kent, England and administered by the National Trust) using the analysis of interview-based, published, broadcast media and internet blog storytelling.

Pilgrim tourists seek and achieve individuation by being part of the essential experience of a site; with its founders, its owners and management and with its continuing re-birth story.

The paper illustrates the application of Jungian archetypes to identify motivations to engage in a tourism experience and as a means for managers to identify a destination's essential characteristics.

This work provides a means for managers to identify a destination's essential characteristics.

The paper documents an original research approach to a previously under-researched research topic.

The purpose of this paper is to understand Gen Zers’ tourism experiences and more specifically, through their tourist practices and their use of social networks. It also explores how Gen Zers apprehends the concept of sustainable tourism.

The authors used a qualitative research approach. The study protocol was conducted in two phases. First, the authors did six semi-directive interviews of young people born between 1995 and 2002. For the second stage of the research, the authors chose the narrative research technique by asking 34 students born between 1995 and 1997 to write a micro story from their travel experience.

Although it is often presented as a narcissistic generation, seeking to put forward their “selves”, for example by posting selfies, this study reveals that Generation Z seems to show a great modesty during their tourist experiences. The results also show that sustainable tourism is not a key concept for the young people interviewed.

Thus, it would be useful to carry out more interviews and to extend the fields of analysis. While certain rules have been respected in the selection of young respondents, the sample does not necessarily reflect all the dimensions characterizing this complex young generation.

We know that Generation Y has been exposed to social networks, often without a filter. The results show that Generation Z is much more suspicious and vigilant with regard to social networks and their use.

This research used an innovative method. It shows how multidimensional this generation is and opens up many ways of research.

This study aims to examine the impact of the structural linkages between memorable tourism experiences, destination attachment, tourists’ satisfaction and customer-based destination brand-equity on tourists’ storytelling intentions.

The authors proposed a conceptual model that examines how memorable experiences contribute to tourists’ sense of attachment to a destination, which can lead to their willingness to share their trip stories. Using partial least square estimation, the authors analysed the conceptual model through data generated by a survey of 448 Indian domestic tourists.

Study confirms the validity and usefulness of the conceptualized model, as it shows significant correlations between the key variables. Specifically, the authors found that positive and memorable tourism experiences significantly affect tourists’ attachment and their satisfaction with destinations. As a result, tourists who form a strong customer-based destination brand equity are more likely to develop storytelling intentions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, current study is the earliest to explore the association between memorable tourism experiences, tourist satisfaction, attachment, customer-based brand equity and how they impact storytelling intentions of tourists.

This study aims to tap into the storytelling’s effects of evoking personal and historical memories and their emotions on travelers’ intention to visit dark tourism sites.

An experimental study was performed. The authors created a story centered on dark tourism as their stimulus. The respondents received two stories in the form of printed ads. The presence and absence of a story character manipulated the stimulus. In addition to the experimental factors, four measurement constructs were included in the model: evoked historical memory, evoked personal memory, evoked emotion and intention to visit.

The results show that evoking historical and personal memories leads to traveler intention to visit the dark tourism sites whether or not the character is present or absent in the story. This study also reveals that only evoked personal memory positively affects individuals’ travel by evoking emotion. Furthermore, evoked historical memories also directly impact the evoke emotion, but only when the character is absent in the story.

This study has three limitations. First, the measurement of emotion in this study only refers to a general measurement and does not specify between negative and positive emotions. Second, the story in the current study only focuses on one example of a natural disaster. Third, this study only used students to represent Generation Z respondents, so it would be interesting if future research compared the results across different generations.

The use of a reflective narrative in storytelling can be one of the options. Marketers should be cautious when using a character when it comes to dark tourism as it might have a boomerang effect, making the destination becoming unattractive to travelers, particularly, if the story tells more about the historical side of dark tourism. Managers of tourist destinations can leverage past visitors to be brand ambassadors of a place since humans share knowledge and experiences through stories and anecdotes. These personal touches can lend the personal aspects of past visitors to current ones, which can evoke memories better than an official message from a tourism board.

This research investigates the role of storytelling in eliciting travelers’ memories and emotional responses and how this response eventually influences their intention to visit a dark-based destination.