FÁILTE GO SLÁINTE: UNDERSTANDING THE TOURIST EXPERIENCE CONCEPT

The Tourism Policy Review Group’s “Vision for Irish Tourism 2003-2012” identified that tourism is increasingly driven by more demanding customer requirements, emphasising the need for the Irish tourism industry to provide compelling tourist experiences. In parallel, there has been an emerging consensus in the experience and service development literature that it is not sufficient to invest money in the design of a service, the focus must be on the design and implementation of memorable personal experiences that meet or exceed the expectations of customers (Smith & Wheeler, 2002). However, despite the importance the literature ascribes to the experience concept there is an imbalance in existing work as the area of experiential tourism services has dealt primarily with the characteristics of experiences (Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons, 2004; Gupta & Vajic, 2000; Carbone & Haeckel, 1994), or on the enhancers and inhibitors to experience delivery (Anderson et al., 2008) or on the benefits of experience delivery (Voss, 2004; Pullman & Gross, 2004) but with scant attention to conceptualising the tourist experience. It is widely acknowledged that the field of experience creation and design would benefit from further theoretical investigation (Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons, 2000; Pullman and Gross, 2003; Stuart and Tax, 2004). Drawing from prior work found in the tourism, services, management, marketing, and policy literatures and documents, this paper aims to explore the nature of the tourist experience concept from both an academic and practice perspective in an attempt to develop an integrated understanding of the experience concept. In essence, the primary objective of this paper is to dissect the experience concept proposed by both literature and policy in order to identify its key dimensions from the perspective of the firm. Key words: tourism, experience concept, small fir