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Editorial

Innovation and Value Creation in Experience-based Tourism

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Experience-based tourism as a term is not subjected to an exact definition. Quite broadly, it rather indicates a type of tourism that is different from more conventional tourism (Stamboulis & Skayannis, Citation2003) and is characterized with offerings with a relatively high degree of differentiation and intangible value perceived by the customers at a certain place and in a certain time. The basis for differentiating can be linked to elements such as specific themes, extreme contexts, novel and innovative arrangements offering exclusiveness, perceived experience value, specialized competence, multiple-sense involvement and other elements that increase the perceived value for the customer. To a great extent, this is also in line with the ideas promoted in Pine and Gilmore's work (Citation1999) and their followers of the experience economy (e.g. Sundbo & Sørensen, Citation2013). The term “Experience-based tourism” should be regarded from at least two main angles, from a management/industry angle and a consumer/market angle. The former draws the attention especially to the production- and management-specific aspects, as the latter is concerned with nature of experiences and experience value as perceived by the customers. From a management perspective, it is assumed that experiences to some degree can be designed, processed or facilitated. A customer-oriented perspective prescribes that as the individual experience remains within the realm of the consumer, the experience value can thus only be appreciated by this person. Experience value in this sense can be expressed by terms, such as memorable (Tung & Ritchie, Citation2011), meaningful (Boswijk, Thijssen, & Peelen, Citation2007), extraordinary (Caru & Cova, Citation2003), mindful (Moscardo, Citation1996), interesting (Dahl, Citation2014) and valuable (Prebensen, Woo, & Uysal, Citation2014). Tourist experiences have been defined as personal travel event that have entered long-term memory (Larsen, Citation2007), and the type of travel events that has been subject to major attention are those with particularly strong emotional impacts, for example, denoted as “serendipitous moments” (Cary, Citation2004). In day-to-day tourism, experiences with less extraordinary emotional effects should not be ignored when considering the total vacation experience (Bell & Lyall, Citation2002; Caru & Cova, Citation2003). Though experience-based tourism can be regarded from different angles, it is assumed that “experience-based tourism” and value creation within the context of the present issue need to be linked to an understanding and an appreciation of what tourist experience actually means for the individual and as such divulges innovation potentials to the tourism industry.

Innovation and Value Creation

The managerial aspects of facilitating for valuable experiences generally seem to be an underrepresented field in tourism research (Ritchie, Tung, & Ritchie, Citation2011). Experience design is still an evolving area of research (Jensen, Citation2013; Sundbo & Sørensen, Citation2013), including innovative aspects (Fuglsang, Sundbo, & Sørensen, Citation2011; Svabo, Larsen, Haldrup, & Bærenholdt, Citation2013) and to some degree, experience design has also gained attention within tourism (Mattson, Sundbo, & Fussing-Jensen, Citation2005; Mossberg, Citation2008; Richards & Wilson, Citation2006). Research on innovation in tourism remains, however, a relatively new exercise (Hjalager, Citation2010) and there is obviously a considerable need for more knowledge on innovation within the tourism industry (Alsos, Eide, & Madsen, Citation2014). One issue of particular importance seems to be cooperation between tourist firms on destination level for nurturing the innovative capacities of individual firms (Dredge, Citation2006). As there has been some research on service innovation processes within big, international tourism companies (Williams & Shaw, Citation2011), a great proportion of the tourism sector is dominated by small firms and innovation processes linked to entrepreneurship (Fuglsang & Eide, Citation2012; Fuglsang & Sørensen, Citation2013) remain a critical issue in tourism (Carmichael & Morrison, Citation2011) besides research on innovations within delimited geographical areas, such as destinations (Dredge, Citation2006; Hjalager, Citation2010; Novelli, Schmitz, & Spencer, Citation2006). Some efforts are made to reveal innovation potentials through focusing on the tourist perceived value (Prebensen, Citation2014a, Citation2014b). Nevertheless, tourism research seems to hesitate in benefiting on entrepreneurial research from other sectors (a converging orientation) and there might be a tendency to regard the tourism sector as so unique that it needs to develop its own frameworks (a diverging orientation) (Hjalager, Citation2010). Generally, the complexity of and interdependency between actors and resources involved in creating experiences for tourists and with tourists, especially on destination level, make the study of roles of different types of stakeholders and the way they cooperate and utilize resources an critical issue for increased understanding of how to improve processes of value creation in experience-based tourism.

Firms can only plan and facilitate for the customer to partake in value-creation processes. The perceived experienced value, however, can only be realized when the customer is partaking in the creating valuable experiences. Drawing on Pine and Gilmore (Citation1999) experience economy, value is about mental and physical participation. The degree of participation and the way customers participate may nonetheless vary (Holbrook, Citation1999; Pine & Gilmore, Citation1999; Prebensen, Kim, & Uysal, Citation2015). The papers included in this issue deals with these aspects of value creation of experiences.

As new models and perspectives are emerging along with technological innovation and developments, the view of the host and the guest is changing. Traditional models of value creation focus on the firm's output and price. As for the roles of actors involved in value creation, however, “ … Designers, manufacturers, marketers, entertainers or retailors are at best merely providers of the frames and elements of a specific experience” (Jantzen, Citation2013, p. 146) where it is the customer who remains in the center. Alternative perspectives to the traditional ones, such as the new Service Dominant logic (Vargo & Lusch, Citation2004) reveal the importance of competences such as knowledge and skills from both customer and service provider in value-creation and innovation processes. Customer involvement and participation as a part of the experience process rely on the firm's and the service provider's ability to include and empower tourist to become an active role in the product development Prebensen (Prebensen, Citation2014a, Citation2014b; Prebensen, Chen, & Uysal, Citation2014). For successful co-creation (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, Citation2004) of value then the firm needs to identify, trace and empower tourists with the right skills and characteristics, and as such turn them into co-creators of value (Lusch, Vargo, & O'Brien, Citation2007). Innovation is, therefore, founded on the customers’ knowledge and skills in certain environmental contexts (Chae, Citation2012).

Brief Presentation of the Contributions

This Special Issue follows the 22nd Nordic Symposium in Tourism and Hospitality Research, “Innovation and value-creation in the experience-based tourism”, arranged in Bodø and the Lofoten Islands in 2013 within the frames of the research project Northern Insights funded though The Norwegian Research Council. Authors who presented extended abstracts to the conference were invited to submit full papers in a Special Issue of Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism. The editors received about 30 manuscripts that went through a double-blind reviewing process. On the way, supplementary manuscripts were invited to be subject for review with the aim of publication. Several papers had to be rejected for various reasons and finally we ended up with eight papers that went successfully through the process.

The contributions of this Special Issue embrace findings from a body of quite varying points of departure that include foci on the tourist experience concept, from both the firms side and the marketing side. Topics such as behaviors of destination visitors and their length of stay, brand personalities, the role of guides for client value perceptions, experience innovation design from the perspective of the companies as well as from a wider range of stakeholders, publications on tourism entrepreneurship and the role of destination boards are included in this issue. Subsequently, a short summary of the main content of the eight independent articles of this issue and how they can be positioned within the tourism research agendas are presented.

The first four articles presented focus on the understanding of tourist experiences and how values can be created for tourists who are visiting a destination and enjoying destination activities and thus contributing to increased long-term value-creation potentials for tourism businesses.

Initially, the understanding of key dimensions of tourist experiences is of great importance for tourism businesses entering into processes for creating valuable experience for their customers. In the article of Jensen, Lindberg and Østergaard, “How can consumer research contribute to increased understanding of tourist experiences? A conceptual review”, the authors explore how perspectives within the field of “consumer culture theory” (CCT) research can contribute to progress in studies of tourist experiences within tourism research. The article initially offers a brief review of some of the seminal contributions on tourist experience within tourism research, primarily from tourism sociology and psychology research, and then presents a comprehensive review of the state of the art and findings from the two main perspectives of CCT research. The article then discusses how the scientific development and the major perspectives from CCT may contribute to new and complementary ways of conceptualizing tourist experiences.

In a more concentrated study, Altin, Uysal and Prebensen explore and test what affects the visitors’ length of stay (LOS). A major issue in the tourism business sector is to motivate the tourist to stay longer while visiting. Not only would a longer LOS help the firms to become more economically sustainable, it is also expected to affect directly on economic value of businesses and destinations and to ensure environmental sustainability through less pollution. By combining socio-demographic and travel behavior, Altin et al. aim to examine the determinants of LOS for northern Norway as a vacation destination. The study indicates that gender of visitors and income influenced LOS. Motivation, perception of the destination (brand personality) and perceived experience value also exerted varying degrees of influence on LOS. Visitors perceiving northern Norway as wholesome, cheerful, charming and sporty/outdoorsy stayed longer in Northern Norway. Furthermore, those with strong social motivations and experiences also stayed longer. How much time the visitor will spend in a given destination could affect the entire structure and design of the destination, businesses and policies. Short-term visitors and long-term visitors might require different types of products and services. For the tourism firms and destination to become more economically and environmentally sustainable then, they may build on these results to head for the right tourists who are inclined to stay longer.

Brand personality is moreover the main issue of the next articles by Seljeseth and Korneliussen in their article “Experience-based brand personality as a source of value creation: The case of Lofoten”. In this article, the tourist destination's brand personality is measured by asking tourists which personality traits they associate with the destination. Based on the work of Sirgy and Su (Citation2000) claiming that a perceived destination's brand personality that is in congruence with the tourist's self-image will favor the tourist destination. The results show that the studied destination consists of four dimensions: ruggedness, sophistication, naturalness and activeness. The study thus validates an instrument to measure destination brand personality using a sample consisting exclusively of tourists who are on holiday at the investigated destination. Finally, the authors suggest that attractive personality traits can be implemented and advertising can highlight tourist activities and guests promoting the intended tourist destination's brand personality, and thus decrease risk and increase transparency and experience value through co-creation.

Tourist guides play a key role in creating value for clients in different forms of organized tourism, such as within nature-based adventure tourism. In the article “The art of guiding in nature based adventure tourism”, Røkenes, Schumann and Rose explore how guides engage different strategies, actions and role choices to facilitate for experience value for clients within mountain bike and backcountry ski tours based on qualitative interviews of clients and guides combined with participant observations. The most important findings are related to guides as risk managers, organizers and pathfinders to fun and memorable experiential moments. A main theoretical contribution is the identification of how guides carefully balance the production of both thrilling and safe experiences. The authors recommend that both businesses and guide education institutions should pay increased focus on organizational systems and on a culture of safety, while also focusing on the ways in which nature-based adventure guides choreograph experiences and interpret local ecological systems.

The last four articles are specifically contributing to new knowledge about innovation processes and structural conditions for such processes, both on company and on extended destination level.

Innovation experience design can be a key for tourist companies to develop competitive offerings to clients; however, research-based knowledge on this issue and the way this can be done is scarce. Especially for small firms in peripheral areas, such knowledge can be a key for moving forward with their businesses. The article, “Experience innovation – A tool for development of small businesses”, by Eriksen explores experience innovation as a means to add value to small firms in peripheral areas. By addressing the research gap on innovation in the experience economy literature, Eriksen examines what experience innovation means and how small firms can work strategically with experience innovation with particular emphasis on experience staging. A main contribution of the article is the presentation of a model for experience innovation. Some of the indicated benefits of this model are that it is simple to use and allows a steady progression and supplies incremental innovations that may be implemented relatively easy and at low cost. Applying action research, conducted as a qualitative experimental design, Eriksen suggests that this research method constitutes a new approach of enabling experience innovation in peripheral areas.

As the co-creation perspective along with the prosumer perspective (Toffler, Citation1980) has gained wide acceptance both among researchers and among industrial actors, the awareness of the central role of the customers and other stakeholders in the experience innovation processes has gradually been revealed. This is reflected in the article “Tourism experience innovation through design” where Jernsand, Kraff and Mossberg develop a model for experience innovation and design where there is an active involvement between actors as partners and participants in collaborative activities with guides, residents and tourists. Experience innovation is described as collaborative and integrated in day-to-day work. The authors develop a process model for experience innovation and design and visual representations are used for communication and idea generation between active involved partners and participants in collaborative activities with guides, residents and tourists. The authors conclude that experience innovation can be viewed as a spiral process within the experience area or experiencescape (Mossberg, Citation2007) and suggest that the insight into and from such processes increases the understanding of how specific characteristics of the experience could be considered and developed for new or improved experiences.

Small entrepreneurial companies constitute a major part of the businesses involved in tourism, especially in remote tourism areas. Entrepreneurship and innovation are already an establish area of research, however, within tourism research literature, there are quite limited publications on these important areas. In their article, “Tourism entrepreneurship – Review and future directions”, Solvoll, Alsos and Bulanova conduct a comprehensive review of publications of entrepreneurship in tourism journals where emerging topics and important research questions, theoretical perspectives and applied methods are identified and summarized. The authors state that so far, little congruent knowledge has been developed from the dispersed literature on tourism entrepreneurship. In their analysis, they differentiate between a convergent approach, where studies build on mainstream entrepreneurship theorizing to examine the context of tourism, and a divergent approach, where studies see tourism entrepreneurship as something particular and different from other types of entrepreneurship needing specific theoretical insights (Hjalager, Citation2010). As for future directions for research on tourism entrepreneurship, they conclusively recommend to follow a combination of convergent and divergent approaches.

Tourism destinations occur as a complex structure of heterogeneous actors offering single elements of the amalgam constituting a destination experience offerings (Buhalis, Citation2000). As the destination organizations have been studied from the aspect of marketing and destination branding, surprisingly limited research has been directed at strategic destination management, including the role of destination boards, for example, related to innovation. In the article “Boards roles and innovative climates in tourist organisations boards”, Garnes and Mathisen investigate destination board members with particular emphasis on the role of innovative climates and direct the attention to the influence of legal structure on the perception of board roles and innovation. They state that tourist organizations are in a constant need for development and innovation and the ultimate organizational decision-makers, boards of directors, have strong influence on organizational success. Among the findings are that the directors perceived the control and strategic tasks as the most relevant for tourist organization boards; however, the data generally report high scores on climate for innovation, still with a relatively stronger emphasis on performance-related climate factors than on social relationship factors. Generally, the study contributes to a better understanding of the board dynamics and mechanisms of boards within the tourism sector.

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to thank “Northern Insights: Service Innovation and Tourist Experiences in the High North” (“Opplevelser i Nord”) supported by The Research Council of Norway for granting the publishing of this Special Issue. The editors would like to thank all the authors and the reviewers for their utmost valuable contributions to make this Special Issue a reality, and trust that the contributions can offer new and enriched insights into critical areas of innovation and value creation in experience-based tourism.

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