Tourism in the Experience Economy - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages 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 ...Download file to see next pagesRead More