The shaping of tourist experience: the importance of stories and themes

Introduction: Stories are such a common part of our lives that it is sometimes easy to overlook their central role in the way we communicate with each other, understand and make sense of the world and its events, and store our memories. The importance of stories as a core element in human cognition and social interaction has long been recognised by psychologists (Schank & Abelson, 1977), sociologists (Durkheim et al., 1995) and anthropologists (Holloway, 1997). In tourism research, however, much of the existing focus has been on narratives in general with only a few researchers explicitly analysing tourist stories (Hsu et al., 2009). This chapter argues that stories and themes are critical elements in understanding tourist experiences and that we need to develop integrative conceptual frameworks in order to better understand the nature of tourist experiences. The overall aim of the chapter is to integrate concepts and issues from research into both the role of stories and themes in tourism and factors contributing to positive tourist evaluations, in order to improve our understanding of tourist experiences. The chapter will follow an approach suggested by Fournier (1998) for understanding brand relationships in marketing and Gorke (2001) for analysing entertainment as public communication. After defining key terms, this chapter will identify major themes and concepts in existing research into stories and themes in tourism and major findings from, and theoretical approaches to, research,into tourist experiences. The chapter will then highlight the convergence between these two areas before suggesting how stories and themes might fit within a systems model of the tourist experience. This systems model will then be used to highlight areas for further research as well as suggesting some practical implications