Autor/a

Natalia (Universidad de las Islas Baleares)

Coautor/es

Vicente Ramos

Javier Rey-Maquieira

Experience staging and tourism competitiveness are usually seen as ambiguous concepts. Due to this complexity, the existing relationship between both variables remains a critical area of study. In a context on which many tourism destinations are seeking for new strategies to enhance their competitiveness, the paper aims to provide an alternative conceptual model to assess the impact of experience staging in the different channels leading to tourism competitiveness. The existing literature of tourism competitiveness usually focused the analysis of the demand patterns on the rational assessments about the different elements of the destination, paying less attention to the tourists’ affective response. The paper pretends to go a step beyond the traditional analysis in tourism competitiveness suggesting the introduction of three different dimensions within every interaction between the different suppliers and the tourist, named cognitive perceptions, sensorial and emotional stimuli. The tourist experience is recognized as an alternative economic offering, able to add new economic value in the cognitive and affective interaction between the different suppliers of the destination and each singular tourist. The recognition of the different dimensions within every interaction results in the co-creation of a more differentiated tourism product. In order to provide a better understanding about the different implications of experiential design in tourism competitiveness, the paper suggests the use of several mediating variables, named the tourist’s perceived value, the final satisfaction and future behavioral intentions. Main findings suggest that, when both the tourist’s thinking and affective processing channels are considered, the resulting tourism product allow the achievement of upper levels of perceived value, both in emotional and functional terms. These upper levels of perceived value explain higher satisfaction levels which, in turn, affect the tourist’s future behavioral intentions in two different mechanisms. On one hand, higher tourist’s satisfaction results in higher willingness to pay, so the supplier is able to capture the improvement in the consumer surplus enhancing the final price of the tourism product. On the other hand, higher tourist’s satisfaction affects other future behavioral intentions which have a significant impact on the supplier’s costs structure, such as loyalty, repetition, positive word of mouth and decreasing complaint behavior. Hence, experience staging affects tourism competitiveness through two different channels: an improvement in the final price of the tourism product and a reduction in the supplier’s costs structure. Practical implications of the research suggest that the destinations positioning themselves as experiential are able to adopt a benefit leadership of price-premiums relative to its competitors, ensuring at the same time the minimization of the costs structure. Experience economy allows the enrichment of tourism competitiveness research through an improved assessment of the role of the demand patterns in the process of economic value creation. In a context on which mature destinations within the Mediterranean have traditionally adopted a cost leadership strategy based on selling an homogeneous tourism product, experience staging currently stands as a potential source for value creation in international markets.    

Palabras clave: experience, feelings, demand, destination, competitiveness.