To consume tourism is to consume experiences. An understanding of the ways in which tourists experience the places and people they visit is therefore fundamental to the study of the consumption of tourism. Consequently, it is not surprising that attention has long been paid in the tourism literature to particular perspectives on the tourist experience, including demand factors, tourist motivation, typologies of tourists and issues related to authenticity, commodification, image and perception. However, as tourism has continued to expand in both scale and scope, and as tourists’ needs and expectations have become more diverse and complex in response to transformations in the dynamic socio-cultural world of tourism, so too have tourist experiences.

Tourist Experience provides a focused analysis into tourist experiences that reflect their ever-increasing diversity and complexity, and their significance and meaning to tourists themselves. Written by leading international scholars, it offers new insights into emergent behaviours, motivations and sought meanings on the part of tourists based on five contemporary themes determined by current research activity in tourism experience: dark tourism experiences, experiencing poor places, sport tourism experiences, writing the tourist experience and researching tourist experiences: methodological approaches.

The book critically explores these experiences from multidisciplinary perspectives and includes case studies from a wide range of geographical regions. By analyzing these contemporary tourist experiences, the book will provide further understanding of the consumption of tourism.

CONTENTS:

- Introduction: thinking about the tourist experience

- Ways of conceptualising the tourist experience: a review of literature

- Dark tourism experiences: mediating between life and death

- Exploring the conceptual and analytical framing of dark tourism: from darkness to intentionality

- Thanatourism and the commodification of space in post-war Croatia and Bosnia

- Experiencing poor places: introduction

- Slumming – empirical results and oberservational-theoretical considerations on the backgrounds of township, favela and slum tourism

- Rights-based tourism – tourist engagement in social change, globalised social movements, and endogenous development in Cuba Rochelle

- Tourists’ photographic gaze: the case of Rio de Janeiro favelas

- Sport tourism experiences: introduction

‘Sporting’ new attractions? The commodification of the sleeping stadium

- Understanding sport tourism experiences: exploring the participant-spectator nexus

- We are family: IGLFA World Championships, London 2008

- Writing the tourist experience: introduction

- Creating your own Shetland: Tourist narratives from travelogues to blogs

- Narrating travel experiences: the role of new media

- Learning from travel experiences: a system for analysing reflective learning in journals

- Researching tourist experiences: methodological approaches

- Qualitative method research and the ‘tourism experience: a methodological perspective applied in a heritage setting

- Exploring space, the senses and sensitivities: spatial knowing

- Kohlberg's Stages: Informing responsible tourist behaviour