Tourism in the Experience Economy - Essay Example

Tourism in the Experience Economy The new economy and tourism together are developing and mounting together influencing the daily lives of the peoplein economic and social aspects. It also facilitates the minds working on it by providing useful information that can be used to enhance the overall management and the quality of the products. Now day's tourism is being recognized as the energetic, lively and the vibrant growing sector of the world. Tourists are said to be increasingly demanding experiences of other cultures1 that are different to their own, motivated by their desire for an authentic experience (MacCannell 1976). The Maori people of New Zealand have had a long history of involvement in tourism and a new wave of Maori operators are seen to have emerged over the last two decades to provide experiences to meet this demand (Taylor 2001). Much of the tourism product in which Maori have been involved, to date, is cultural performance, such as cultural experience evenings (Maori Tourism Taskforce Report 1992). Thecultural experiences offered are commonly promoted by tour operators as "traditional" or "authentic" experiences of Maori culture. Initially the idea of experience economy became known in businesses but today it has extended its roots to tourism. Experience economy is a well thought out contribution in existing economics. Most of the economies in the past were agricultural based economies. And agricultural based economy was based on raw materials. Then there came the industrial revolution and the leisure time became valuable as it was short. People started getting daily bread, ready-made clothes and tinned food. The era of manufactured goods arrived! This industrial revolution lead to economic prosperity by increases wages and decreasing the number of hours worked. Today, majority of the companies and organizations are transforming their services from services to memorable experiences. Such as Pizza Hut is liked by most of the people because it manages to host a child's birthday party. Here, the workers are the actors and people visiting those areas are the visitors and the place acts as a stage. Gilmore and Pine2 (1998) believe that the experiences and services are distinct to each other. They believe that experiences should provide a memorable activity that will remain with a particular individual for a long time. In order to achieve this and in order to develop that product, visitors must be attracted and drawn into the activity in such a way that they feel the sensation and the thrill. And in order to feel the sensation visitors should participate in that activity. This process demands and requires highly skilled personnel who can personalize each event according to the behavioral traits, the needs and the response of the guests. Providing experiences is not an easy job. It demands and requires a new supplierperspective. Suppliers of such goods consider themselves as manufacturers. It is important for the companies that they should themselves as stagers of events and not just the manufacturers of various products. Like any theatrical event, there should be a designed activity for the sets and dialogue scripting. Actors need to dynamically select individual sentences in response to the body language, questions and statements. In order to be sensational and an experience of thrill for the visitors, it has to be an interactive experience in such a way that the guest has more influence on the actions than the actors. In some situations where the experience is sensitive type then we cannot expect the visitors to open up and engage in that activity on the first encounter. Sometimes it may require a number of encounters so that they reveal themselves over a period of time.3 The process of designing services that convey unforgettable personal experiences is a combination of art, development, knowledge and skill, and an art that is poorly understood. Theatre industry is considered to be someone with perfect control over the process of staging plays.4 An experience enter the minds of the customers when a company purposely uses goods as props and services as the stage in order to slot in individual visitors in such a way that it results in a memorable event. It is widely accepted that commodities are substitutable and tradable whose sole purpose is to satisfy the wants, goods are substantial and touchable, services subtle and experiences memorable. Experiences have always been taken as the compassion and sensitive element of the amusement and entertainment business. Now days the idea of promoting leisure experience is spreading its roots even away from the theaters. Now advanced technologies give confidence to a new diverse category of artistic work that can be a good experience for the customers. These technologies include communicating and collaborating games, Internet chat rooms and motion-based simulators. A restaurant like Planet Hollywood5 is just a support for entertainment and diversion. These places portray by contributing in activities that provide amusement or enjoyment involving attractive, absorbing and charming activities, displays and advertising events. Gilmore and Pine6 (1998) relate to the term Experience Economy by describing it as a well established service activate and bring about the sale of mass customization services side by side to theater. The consumers of the latest world want new and different experiences. They would love to dine out at restaurants like the Planet Hollywood and would love to shop at Beursplien in Rotterdam. This gives us a clue that consumers have no problem with the financial services but they are looking for good memorable services. Therefore, in order to be successful, the businesses today must give attention to the process of designing tremendous and unforgettable events and proceedings for their loyal customers. Now days the memory itself has been converted into a valuable product because it constitute the aspect of experience in it. Therefore, businesses that provide memorable experience deserve to charge the amount that they spent in terms of energy, money and time to develop and design those memories for the consumers. The most important element that plays a major role in the transformation process is education. Organizations consider it to be a natural factor that creates outputs which are more valuable than its inputs. It seems that experiences have a fellow feeling with entertainment, leisure and relaxation industries. This activity, amusement and diversion industries have the ability to get hold of the skills and talents of people. Now other industries have also realized that they can make over a service into a memorable event that the customer will want to repeat again over a period of time and will want to give an account of it to all their friends. Staging events like these is really classy, expensive and time consuming but since the people are willing to make a payment in order to turn the humdrum into a sensation, organizations have to go through the intensive hard work. In the near future, tourism is expected to grow and progress by 4.2 percent per annum. The main focus of tourism is on the people. Where as, tourism experience includes a communication that goes back and forth between people, places and products. Tourism experiences embody various forms of experiences in it. The organizations are aware of each of these experiences and they are also aware of the range of constraints and perceptions that are used by consumers to create their individual experiences. The companies today have tippled their efforts to create better, exciting and experimental experiences than before. These organizations are gone through the intense hard work just to create products for those people or visitors that are looking for development, diversity and leisure. Shopping is one of the main and the most attractive aspect of tourism. There are two main steps that should be taken care of in the process of making events a memorable experience for customers.7 They are coordinating the right deliveries and emphasize on the individual preferences of high value customers. Almost all around the world, a lot of companies have adopted mass customization in order to stay away from the potential disaster and present a distinctive and exceptional product to their consumers. The four distinct approaches have been identified that further explains mass customization. They are adaptive customization, collaborative customization, cosmetic customization and transparent Customization Adaptive customization put forward one standard product and gives customers a room to amend, modify or revise the product according to their individual preferences. Collaborative customization on the other hand, carries out a dialogue with each individual customer and helps them to express their needs and then taking them towards those modified products that satisfy those needs. Where as cosmetic customization present and supply a standard product in a unique manner to a number of customers. Transparent customization endow with individual customers by providing them distinctive and exclusive goods and services. A lot of people have tried to clarify the meaning of experientializing as those goods or services that take in more than one experimental and pragmatic characteristic and feature. For example, the center of attention for apparel manufacturers might include cleaning experience, hanging experience and wearing experience. If an individual start thinking as a manufacturer than that person will feel that he is surrounded by goods and services that add value to a particular activity ands adjoining them with various experiences.8 A lot of businesses and organizations have implemented the model of experience economy. This model has taken them to a level where they can recommend themed experiences for their customers. Researchers have determined five main belief or values that are critical to the dramatization and production of successful themed experience for their respective customers. They are appealing, attractive and charming theme should revise the visitor's logic of reality. Those experiences are considered to be the most valuable that change the sagacity of reality completely by influencing the experience of matter, time and space, like winning themes that incorporate matter, space and time in one consistent and organized piece, these themes become more powerful and strong by just creating a number of places within the boundaries of one place, the particular theme should fit the character in order to produce a memorable experience for customers.9 If formerly a company became aware of the business of staging experiences then it should consider four forms of theatre. Pine and Gilmore were successful in discovering a portfolio approach categorize different types of theatre with the help of two dimensions. They are the fact that the performance is a dynamic or stable and that the audience forms a dynamic group or a stable group. This further leads to a cataloging method that includes four types of theatre. Four types of theater are, improve theatre, matching theatre, platform theatre and street theater10 Improve theater includes that demands certain skills of thinking and responding to immediate changing demands of audiences. Where as matching theater demand and need the amalgamation and incorporation of the results of intensive efforts from one disjointed time frame to another. Platform Theater is normally considered to be a conventional theater where there is a live performance. Street theaters include the clowns and mimes. In this form of the theater the script is stable but the audience lively and self motivated. If a particular organization begin by targeting its audience and trying to understand their backgrounds and minds then that organization achieve its success by capturing their attention. Organizations basically get credit for their effort of understanding their audiences. Then the audience will respond by giving an opportunity to those organizations that they will be able to comprehend easily. The most significant and vital element is to begin with the view point of the customer and not from the angle of a company or organization11. The organization should go through the process of universal experience of their particular activity or product. These firms must have spent intensive struggle while relating to its target audience that will make them want to listen what the firm has to convey to its audience. Experience is a subset of interpretation of the practical life or the overall knowledge. It is considered to be an interaction of individuals with each other and their interaction with the environment. It includes a lot of aspects of life such as doing something, feeling something, handling things, perceiving and suffering. The common characteristics of different experiences experienced by a number of individuals are on the basis of their common culture and traditions. Where as education is the inspiring and enriching of brainpower by resources of social conditions and tools. Therefore, education that is the foundation of society is the conscientiousness of every individual. Bibliography 1- Alison J. McIntosh and Henare Johnson (2004), Exploring the nature of the Maori experience in New Zealand: Views from hosts and tourists, -Vol. 52, No. 2/ 2004/ 117-129. 2- Andersson D. Tommy. (2007) The Tourist in the Experience Economy.vol 7, issue 1, pages 47-58. Brent R. J. (2003). The Competitive Destination: A Sustainable Tourism Perspective CABI Publishing, Butterworth-Heinemann Daniel. Hjorth. (2007). Entrepreneurship and the experience economy. Copenhagen Business School Press Dimitrios.(2006) Tourism Management Dynamics: Trends, Management and Tools In: Robinson M. and Boniface P. (eds) Tourism and Cultural Conflicts. Oxford: CABI Publishing. 229-245. O'Dell Tom. (2005) Experiencescapes: Tourism, Culture and Economy. Copenhagen Business School Press DK. Of Tourism Research, 28 (1), 7-26. Pine and Gilmore, (1998), The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage, Harvard Business School Press. 3- Ryan C. (1999) Some Dimensions of Maori Involvement in Tourism. Shaw Gareth. (2004). Tourism and Tourism Spaces. Sage Shaw Gareth. (2007). Managing Coastal Tourism Resorts: A Global Perspective. Multilingual Matters. 4- Taylor J. (2001) Authenticity and Sincerity in Tourism. Annals Weiermair Klaus. (2004)The Tourism and Leisure Industry: Shaping the Future. Havorth Press. Read More