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Ways to manage the emotional experience: how can we make the tourism experience unforgettable?

Heinz-Rico SCHERRIEB, Dr. jur. utr. Professor for Tourism and Leisure Economics -
Head of the Institute for Tourism and Leisure Research at the HTW, University of Applied Sciences Chur, Switzerland

 

Slideshow

 

Introduction

People's behaviour is changing. Trade is faced with this every single day. The motto "more for less“ concerns the tourism and leisure industry more and more. Even alpine mountains have to confront new competitive situations and must offer more than just a transportation to the top of the mountain.

Changes and Trends

The changes in leisure activities are mainly caused by the new European and the global competitive constellations. From these there results a new economic framework of conditions and connected fundamental consequences on the income situation of a major part of the population. Additionally, there are demographic slides, sociological re-groupings and a more confident consumer behaviour.

Leisure time behaviour is a mirror to the size of households and their structures in Europe. Singles are oriented more strongly towards offered leisure activities outside their own four walls, smaller families establish circles of friends with other smaller families, elderly people are still very mobile without joining up with the families of their children.

The households growing smaller have already led to a more outward orientation of leisure activities. What dominates are activities helping to get to know people, as a considerable part of the population wants or needs those because of their living situation (single, divorced, widowed).

Apart from that, leisure behaviour is being influenced by the individual lifestyles, which can be either inward our outward oriented.

Within the family, it can be seen that family members choose to participate in sports activities with friends and acquaintances instead of with other family members as friends are much easier to cope with than family members. Even children try more and more to make themselves independent as adults are unable to understand their interests or just cannot keep up with them. The friend from around the corner seems much better suited than siblings and family members. For grandparents looking after the grandchildren has become acceptable only if they know that the kids will be picked up again after a short while.

Loyalty to specific leisure activities or destinations is a thing of the past too. Adults do not automatically choose the destinations they have visited in their youths with their parents and regulars in holiday resorts have become rarer too. The search for something new and different is part of the lifelong process of experience. This dynamic has led in the meantime to an interchangeability of all leisure activities or passivities.  This means that there are no preferred leisure activities anymore but a visit to the zoo is spontaneously substituted by a visit to the cinema and later forgotten. Many of those leisure activities that ten years ago were attended regularly today are targets for a specific period in life, e.g. as long as the children are small, or are attractive only once in a lifetime.

To visit an alpine destination is not just based on external influences, but on leisure literacy, i.e. the past leisure experience of visitors. In case the visitor has been dissatisfied with a previous visit to a different alpine destination or even "shocked", he or she will not enter a alpine destination again, unless the pressure from the group or the family to visit again has grown too strong. Quality standards of other alpine destinations thus becomes increasingly important, almost as much as the standard of the own destination. But if a guest during a previous visit has been satisfied or even emotionally touched, another visit will not be in a too distant future.

Emotion Management

The planning and setting up of a Visitor-Emotion-Management System will possibly be the most important marketing instrument in the near future. If it is possible to grab the visitor emotionally and lead him or her around the alpine destination wrapped in a mixture of information and emotions, visitors will regard this as a positive experience.

Philip Kotler stated long time ago that people would like to be entertained at every situation, work, shopping, consuming. Nowadays people wants to have more.
Till now, emotions have been required but have not been always operational aim of the contract in tourism and leisure. Now, the described object of the contract in tourism and leisure.

The challenge then, is to design a concept of emotion management that serves to induce and maintain in the customer, a “good mood”, that consists of varies emotional states of differing durations.
It is less important to be satisfied than to be happy. The final goal of any leisure service should be happiness. Happiness is determined by the level of emotionality.

Sensations have been recognized as elements of services: The result of a service is always a sensation.

The product, emotion, is self generated by the consumer, therefore the number of elements required to elicit an emotion is more or less precise. To operate on a basis of emotion management we would need to analyse the components and elements of different emotions and the ways to achieve them, market them and enable customers to consume them.
The sum of emotions has to be transformed into an emotional state: a sustained experience.

Commercially this last point is of primary interest, as it determines whether or not the customers return.

The stories that are told in themed leisure establishments consists of a series of signals and symbols that are offered the public giving it the opportunity to construct for themselves the totality of the story.
To live the emotions customers use increasingly, technical (virtual reality), economic (themed shops) and process (themed vacations) alternatives.
The customer has become plurisensorial, plurioptional, pluricapable or a multiprocess consumer. The new multiprocess consumer is capable to assimilate the diversion and commercial elements in only one service at the time. On the customers’ part, it is less likely that the boundary between the emotional and rational will be broken.
A tourist’s enjoyment during his stay in a tourism or leisure facility is generally experienced as a process in time; a sensation or emotion with a beginning and an end that experiences acceleration and relaxation. Each person bases their consumption of a leisure service on their own script of adventures and sensations that they expect to encounter.They have made their own mental design before stepping onto a leisure or tourism stage.
The success of a leisure scenario depends on creating a proper genius loci.This genius loci is the secret of a leisure scenario because it can stimulate and provoke emotions.In the creation of the extra reality sensation it is important that the elements of construction and of decoration should be authentic and real. Edutainment and infotainment are appearing to unite learning with amusement, where the marketing message is conveyed through stories or reports.

The settings or these stories should be based on cognitive psychology with the intention of optimising the experiences and realistic situations of the visitors.
The multi-level experience is based on four elements:

• Intellectual: knowledge of other cultures
• Sensorial: flavours, smells, colours, temperature
• Emotional: fright, loneliness, fraternity, tenderness
• Corporal: pain, effort, perspiration

The end result of a visit is, however, a state of mind that alters time and is anchored in emotional memory.

A customer/consumer is, at the end of the day, satisfied, enchanted, sad or disappointed and returns home with this experience.
If you follow this basic knowledge, the following rules of the stage management can be fixed:

• Give the visitor an added value
• Give him a non exchangable adventure
• Give him wow-effects as much as possible
• Combine high tech with high touch
• Use staff and people as an attraction
• Even if people cannot understand the historical background of your performances, they should enjoy the entertaining components

Examples

In alpine destinations the mountain is the most important product, the USP. Therefore we should look on this core product and enhance it.

The Action Mountain in the Summer

Until now we have transported the guests with cable cars to the top of the mountains and we transported them down the same way as if they didn’t prefer to walk.

In the meantime, there are different systems to make the way down to an adventure. The Mountain Glider is like a roller coaster on a rope. The Sky Glider is a simulation of a ride with a paraglider. With the Downhill Coaster you are in a cabine which is coming down very fast to the valley.

Even in summer you can have the same enjoyment as in the winter. One of the possibilities is to give the guests toboggans with wheels, Downhill Carts, Devil Bikes or Mountain Skaters. There are special installations for the summer like the Alpine Coaster or summer bob slides in a half pipe.

The Mystic Mountain

In the history of mankind mountains always have been regarded as fortresses of mystic, as home of witches, dragons and noisy ghosts. If you theme the mountain as a dragon mountain, mountain of witches or ghosts, you only will need to place some identifying symbols to support the dream of the guests.

The Family Mountain

Alpine farm houses can be turned into an attraction: e.g. with playgrounds for the children, small animals, a baking-oven to prepare the self-fabricated bread or a barn, where they can jump into the hay.

Water Fun in the Alps

Mountains do have plenty of water. Therefore it is very easy to install waterslides on a plastic foil and with half tubes. Playgrounds where the children can learn the physics of water are excellent edutainment facilities.

The forest industry in the alps can be turned into an attraction for the whole family with different types of transportation (train, tipper truck, raft) and children can play in a sawmill.

Landmarks at the Top of the Mountain

More and more people need a special target or reason to climb uphill. The traditional christian cross on the summit of a mountain is no longer a motivation. In China millions of tourists climbe up a mountain where they installed “steps to the heaven”. Why do we not have such an installation in the alps?

Architectural landmarks such as a lookout bridge or windmill towers are very popular.

 

Evening Entertainment

Evening Entertainment in the alpine region can be very exciting. The illumination of the snowfields of the Pilatus is very popular. In Arosa, where they constructed all technical equipment for water and light shows in the upper lake. They have created an event, which is not only a meeting point in the evening for the guests of the village but also for the guests of the surrounding tourism destinations who travel to the Arosa area in the evening to watch this show.

Conclusion

Additional artificial attractions in the Alps will help to enhance the attractiveness of a destination in general. By this, it offers an additional value to the customers and supports their dreams.

 

 

Slideshow