Annals of Tourism Research 100 (2023) 103553

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Annals of Tourism Research

journal homepage: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/annals-of-
tourism-research

Research article

A review of aesthetics research in tourism:

Launching the Annals of Tourism Research Curated Collection on
beauty and aesthetics in tourism
Ksenia Kirillova
Institut Paul Bocuse, Château du Vivier, 1A Chemin de Calabert, Ecully 69130, France

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This systematic literature review identifies major trends that guided tourism research on
Received 7 November 2022 beauty and aesthetics, critiques its current state, and proposes directions to advance tourism
Received in revised form 2 March 2023 theory and practice. The review categorizes 39 studies into five themes corralled into two
Accepted 7 March 2023
meta-themes: Consuming aesthetic value (Aesthetic Judgement & Experiences, Effects of Tour-
Available online 23 March 2023
ism Aesthetics, Tourism Aesthetics & Sustainability) and Producing aesthetic value (Founda-
Associate editor: Scott McCabe tional Issues in Aesthetics Management, Management of Destination Aesthetics). Proposed
future research directions include challenging West European aesthetic ideas, considering the
perspectives of destination residents, and expanding research to aesthetic categories beyond
Keywords:
the beautiful. The article also launches the Annals of Tourism Research Curated Collection on
Beautiful destinations
Destination attractiveness Beauty & Aesthetics in Tourism. The Collection contains all past articles published in Annals
Ugly of Tourism Research on the topic, and continues to grow as new articles are added.
Kant © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Sustainability
Aesthetic value

Introduction

As a form of experiential consumption, tourism implies activities “producing” fantasies, imagination, and dreams, which spe-
cifically involve the aesthetic component (Kirillova et al., 2014; Light, 2009). With crucial links to other disciplines, aesthetics is a
branch of philosophy that is concerned with understanding the nature and appreciation of beauty (Walton, 2007). Beauty is fea-
tured prominently in a tourist experience, which, by nature, is image-oriented (Urry, 1995). Beauty of exotic faraway (de Botton,
2003) and nearby (Andrews, 1989) places has been romanticized and admired for centuries, making some destinations desired
and sought-after places to visit. Urry (1990, 1995) coined the term tourist gaze which, among other aspects, describes how people
view the places they tour. Socio-culturally framing tourists' visual consumption at destinations—gaze—guides tourists' aesthetic
experiences by marking attractions as worth appreciating, that is attractive, or not worthy of visual appreciation, that is unattrac-
tive (de Botton, 2003). The gaze, however, is not a mere reflection of destination environment in a tourist's perception. Gaze is a
socially conditioned pattern of seeing the world as it structures and shapes the way destination aesthetics appears in a tourist's
lifeworld (Urry & Larsen, 2011). In Bourdieu (1984)'s sense, this patterned way of tourism consumption can be seen as a marker
of class distinction that affects the development of taste, including aesthetic taste. Like in arts, tourists with high vs. low brow
tastes “see” and experience destinations differently (Ahmad, 2014). Beyond tourism sociology, allusions to beauty can be found
in the literature at intersections of tourism and semiotics (e.g. Echtner, 1999) as well as of tourism and arts (e.g. Franklin, 2018).

E-mail address: ksenia.kirillova@institutpaulbocuse.com (K. Kirillova).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2023.103553
0160-7383/© 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
K. Kirillova Annals of Tourism Research 100 (2023) 103553

The importance of aesthetics in tourism can also be argued from the perspective of what is termed the atmospheric turn in hu-
manities and social sciences, including tourism research. The atmospheric turn implies the shift from “where to” to “wherein”
(Volgger & Pfister, 2020, p. 4), which means that individuals are always wrapped and permeated by environment or atmosphere.
Böhme (2017), p. 20) explicitly connects atmosphere to aesthetics in his new theory of “felt spaces” where an atmosphere
becomes “moving emotional powers, spatial carriers of moods.” Aesthetics, in this view, presents a way to produce atmospheres
capable of affecting human states. In tourism, for example, it is well established that destination attractiveness contributes to tour-
ist satisfaction (Alegre & Garau, 2010; Kirillova & Lehto, 2015), and atmospherics, more generally, affects the overall experience at
a tourist attraction (Bonn et al., 2007). Similarly, Rickly-Boyd (2012) relies on Benjamin's (1936) concept of aura, which is an in-
tersubjective aesthetic property associated with landscapes and objects present in time and space. She argues that authenticity in
tourism is not external to tourists but it is to be experienced and felt.
Despite the above, the issue of beauty and aesthetics in tourism has remained at the margins of tourism (and hospitality)
scholarship. As this review will highlight, only 39 studies are identified since the conception of tourism as a research domain.
The primary objectives of this paper are twofold: 1) to identify major trajectories that guided tourism research on beauty and aes-
thetics and 2) to offer a critique of the current state of scholarship on the topic. As the first state-of-the-art literature review on
beauty and aesthetics, this paper officially launches the Curated Collection “Beauty & Aesthetics in Tourism” in Annals of Tourism
Research. Ultimately, the review hopes to inspire new ways of theorizing and researching aesthetics in tourism and hospitality.

Method

A systematic literature review seeks to collect academic publication data utilizing a carefully designed and transparent process
(Linnenluecke et al., 2020). As a type of scientific inquiry, a literature review should be valid, reliable, and reproducible (Xiao &
Watson, 2019). Following Xiao and Watson (2019), this literature review process consists of 1) inclusion criteria, 2) literature
identification, 3) screening for inclusion, 4) quality and eligibility assessment, 5) iterations, and 6) data analysis.

Inclusion criteria

Only peer-reviewed journal publications and book chapters published on the topics of tourism and hospitality (e.g. hotels,
restaurant) were considered. However, this literature review was not limited to hospitality and tourism journals but included
publications available, for example, in general business literature that satisfied the criterion above. Since tourism aesthetics is a
rather emerging area of research, no specific time frame was imposed. It is worth noting that this review concluded the literature
research on June 30, 2022, which serves as the chronological cut-off point. Only articles and chapters published in English were
considered.

Literature identification

To identify the overall state and evolution in tourism scholarship on aesthetics, a broad-scale search of two databases were
conducted. First, the literature search began with the ScienceDirect database using a combinations of key words “aesthetic*
AND tourism,” “aesthetic* AND hospitality,” aesthetic* AND hotel,” aesthetic* AND restaurant,” aesthetic* AND destination,”
“beaut*AND tourism,” “beaut*AND hospitality,” “beaut*AND hotel,” “beaut*AND restaurant,” “beaut*AND destination.” For each re-
sulting article/chapter, preliminary relevance was determined by the publication title and the journal name (tourism/hospitality
vs. all others). From this information, if the content appeared to discuss any aesthetic-related problematics in tourism and hospi-
tality, the article/chapter's full reference was saved and its pdf copy was downloaded for further evaluation. The same process was
repeated for GoogleScholar, which largely duplicated the results from the ScienceDirect search, except for three additional book
chapters. After this step, 36 articles and book chapters were retained for further analysis.

Screening for inclusion

The researcher read the abstract of each of the 36 publications to further decide their relevance to the review topic – aesthetics
in tourism and hospitality. The review only included publications that focused on aesthetics in tourism and hospitality as the main
research question or used it as a key variable. At this point, publications that focused on aesthetic labor were excluded as it is
considered a separate area of research. Two publications that utilized “aesthetics” in a sense different from the area of inquiry
of beauty were further eliminated from the dataset. For example, Mostafanezhad (2013, p. 150) uses the term “aesthetics” in a
broader sense to denote “how human sense is organized.” Finally, studies that considered wider topics of destination attractive-
ness (of which scenic beauty was one of many aspects, e.g. Krešić & Prebežac, 2011) were also excluded. Therefore, 29 publica-
tions were retained.

Quality and eligibility assessment

The researcher read through the full-text articles and chapters to further evaluate the quality and eligibility of the research.
Journal articles and book chapters were considered as high-quality research if a publisher did not appear on Beall's list of pred-
atory journals and publishers. Based on this criterion, one additional paper was excluded.

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Iterations

The researcher identified additional papers through backward and forward search. In terms of the former, the researcher
checked references for each article to detect additional relevant studies that could have been missed during the initial literature
search. In terms of the latter, GoogleScholar was used to track publications that cited each of the article in the dataset. Nine ad-
ditional journal articles were identified, assessed for relevance as previously described, and included in the review. The final data
set therefore consisted of 39 publications: 35 journal articles and 4 book chapters (see Supplementary material).

Data analysis

The researcher read each article and chapter from the dataset in detail. This review employed a mixed method approach to
data analysis, in which the qualitative technique of inductive thematic analysis was combined with quantitative content analysis
and simple frequency counts. All analyses were performed manually.

Overview of the field

The overview of the field is based on simple frequency counts. As expected, the chronological tracing revealed the nature of aes-
thetics as an upcoming research field in the tourism and hospitality literature. Interestingly, two earliest publications on the topic
(Austin, 2007; Ely, 2003) were actually published in non-tourism journals, and both were literary analyses of travel writing. The ear-
liest publication appearing in a tourism journal dated to 2008 (Wang et al., 2008). Only eight papers, two of which came from the same
edited book “Philosophical issues in tourism,” were published prior to 2014. However, from 2014 onward, there was a marked increase
in publications across various journals (see Fig. 1). Four papers were published just in the first six months of 2022.
An overwhelming majority (34 out of 39, or 87 %) of papers appeared in tourism and hospitality journals/books, with two
relevant papers published in general business journals (Journal Business Research, The Service Industries Journal) and three - in
other journals (Sustainability). Thirty-two (82 %) papers were published on tourism-specific topics (e.g. destination aesthetics,
tour guide appearance) and seven focused on a specific hospitality setting, of which six papers focused on hotel aesthetics and
one – on aesthetics of dining environments. Tourism Geographies published three papers, International Journal of Contemporary
Hospitality Management, Annals of Tourism Research, Current Issues in Tourism, Tourism, Management, and Tourism Analysis pub-
lished two papers each, while most publications in this review were the only aesthetic-focused papers in their respective journals.

Fig. 1. Number of publications by year (N = 39)

Note: Data for 2022 are for January–June only.

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K. Kirillova Annals of Tourism Research 100 (2023) 103553

This suggests that there is no clear leader in publishing aesthetics-related research among tourism and hospitality journals. In
terms of authorship and frequency of publication on the topic, two research teams stood out: Kirillova and colleagues authored
six papers (15 %) in the dataset and Breiby and colleagues authored four papers (10 %) out of 39.
From the methodological approach, nearly a quarter of all papers were conceptual (9 out of 39), which is indicative of the
early stage of development of aesthetics as a research domain in tourism and hospitality domain. Interestingly, five out of six pa-
pers published before 2014 were conceptual. For papers based on empirical studies, 12 (31 %) had a clear quantitative orientation,
mostly based on survey data; 11 (28 %) papers were based had a clear a qualitative orientation with interviews as a dominant
method of data collection; three (8 %) - employed the mixed method. The remaining four papers (10 %) utilized innovative
approaches such as eye tracking (two papers), AI-based facial recognition (one paper), and machine learning (one paper) (see
Fig. 2). Juxtaposing this information on the time trend, one can see that a qualitative approach was favored at the start of the
research on tourism aesthetics. Only four out of 21 papers published in 2003–2018 were quantitative, while in 2019–2022 10
out of 18 studies followed either quantitative or mixed-method. This, once again, points to a slow but yet steady process of
maturing of this research domain.

Main research trajectories

Inductive thematic analysis revealed five major themes that could be loosely corralled into two meta-themes: Consuming aes-
thetic value (demand side) and Producing aesthetic value (supply side). The meta-theme Consuming aesthetic value, which ac-
counts for over three-quarters of the dataset (27/39, or 69 %), is concerned with human perception of aesthetic features of
tourism and hospitality environments, designs, and settings. Here, the “human” does not necessarily refer to a tourist and may
include tourism/hospitality employees. The meta-theme Producing aesthetic value is concerned with aesthetic issues of designing
and organizing tourism environments for consumption by tourists, guests, and employees. This meta-theme represents a lesser
percentage (12/39, or 31 %) of papers in the dataset, suggesting a current skewness in the interest and understanding of tourism
aesthetics from marketing, as opposed to from destination planning and management perspectives. Fig. 3 presents the meta-
themes and the hierarchy of themes.

Consuming aesthetic value

This meta-theme consists of three themes: 1) Aesthetic judgements & experiences, 2) Effects of tourism aesthetics, and 3) Aesthetics
& tourism sustainability.

Aesthetic judgements & experiences

The first theme is comprised of 11 studies that jointly focused on the phenomenon of aesthetic judgement and the aspects that
constitute an aesthetically pleasing environment for tourists. It is worth noting that this theme is represented by qualitative and

Fig. 2. Methodological orientation (N = 39).

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K. Kirillova Annals of Tourism Research 100 (2023) 103553

Fig. 3. Main research trajectories (N = 39).

conceptual studies of exploratory nature. As the earliest study published in a tourism journal, Kirillova et al. (2014) interviewed
57 tourists to arrive at 21 dimensions, along which tourists make an aesthetic judgement of a destination, that is, judge the des-
tination as beautiful or ugly. These dimensions were further organized into nine themes: Scale (physical magnitude of a destina-
tion, e.g. Grand-Quaint), Time (perceived age of a destination, e.g. Young-Old), Condition (the state of destination's physical
features, e.g. Clean-Dirty), Balance (appropriateness of destination cue to the environment, e.g. Authentic-Artificial), Sound (percep-
tions of auditory cues at a destination, e.g. Loud-Quiet), Diversity (variety of visual and other experiential cues at a destination, e.g.
Diverse-Alike), Shape (e.g. Round-Angular), Uniqueness (whether a destination has uniquely identifiable features, Unique-Ordinary),
and Novelty (the extent of contrast between a home and the destination environment, Novel-Typical). They were organized ac-
cording to the two-dimensional model with two axes: Subjective-Objective and Abstract-Concrete. The researchers argued that
dimensions that are more subjective and abstract in nature (Balance, Novelty) are relatively more difficult to market and manage,
than objective and concrete dimensions (e.g. Condition, Sound). While Kirillova et al. (2014)'s did not differentiate between
human-made and nature-based destinations, Breiby (2014, 2015) was interested in tourists' aesthetic judgements of nature des-
tinations. Breiby's (2014) qualitative study, for example, determined Harmony, Variation/contrast, Scenery/viewing, Genuineness,
and Art/architecture as factors influencing tourist satisfaction. In the follow up study, Breiby (2015) found Cleanliness as an addi-
tional factor and clarified that Genuineness matters most for human-made aspects of an environment.
Moving away from the idea that aesthetics is restricted to the beautiful, Lee and Yan (2020) made an effort to develop a scale to
measure cuteness of a tourist destination or an attraction, in the context of Macau. The validated scale consists of Irregularity, Lightness,
Roundness, Smallness, and Creativity dimensions. The researchers observed that there is a rise in terms of the cute culture in East Asia
and further noted that the notion of cute could be more relevant to the East Asian context than that of the beautiful. Yu and Egger
(2021) employed machine learning approach to understand the role of color in the photographs taken at destinations in influencing
engagement in social media. They found that the color blue contributed to greater engagement rates in the case of nature-based des-
tinations, while violet and warm colors were more associated with urban destinations. Similarly, Hauser et al. (2022) looked at the role
of visual elements in tourist aesthetic judgements, based on the analysis of #beautifuldestinations on Instagram. Largely corroborating
Yu and Egger's (2021) results, the finding highlighted the importance of color, followed by light and line. With regard to the types of
photography, landscape photographs were perceived as most aesthetically pleasing.
These studies on theme were not restricted to the Kantian idea of aesthetic judgement. Austin's (2007) literary analysis of 19th
century English travel writing examined aesthetic embarrassment associated with touring picturesque landscapes. Zheng, Wei,
Zhang, & Ying (2022) introduced the Chinese concept Yijing, which emphasizes intersubjectivity and embodiment of aesthetic ap-
preciation to the English language tourism scholarship. Set in the context of Chinese classical gardens, the research found that
tourists experienced Yijing when they developed an intrinsic connection to the scenery by means of contemplating the lifestyle
of ancient literati and by pondering the connection between the human and the nature. Zheng et al. (2022) rightfully argued
that Chinese aesthetics, as perceived by Chinese tourists, is better understood by relying on indigenous, as opposed to,
Western-European ideas.
The only conceptual paper is the one by Kirillova and Wassler (2020) who proposed the three-level framework, for incorpo-
rating aesthetics in tourist experience design, based on the idea of theming. The first level represents the destination features like
those discussed in Kirillova et al. (2014) and Breiby's (2014, 2015). Critiquing the mere visual focus of the tourist gaze, the

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K. Kirillova Annals of Tourism Research 100 (2023) 103553

authors proposed the second level which was based on multisensory atmospherics (somatic, olfactory, auditory and gustatory)
comprising the aesthetic experiences of the beautiful, the picturesque, and the sublime. The final layer dealt with the role of des-
tination residents who were concurrently seen as sources, co-creators, and beneficiaries of destination aesthetics. In addition to
discussing the role of aesthetics in the theming process, the proposed model placed the tourist in the center, focusing more on
the demand side.
The remaining papers under this theme chose to limit their inquiries to a specific tourism or hospitality context. Based on phe-
nomenological interviews with hotel guests, Alfakhri et al. (2018) proposed the concept of “hotelscape” that consisted of color,
lighting, furniture, layout, and overall style. Interestingly, it was found that hotel guests do not tend to focus on hotel aesthetics
per se, rather perceive functional and aesthetic features jointly and holistically. As the only research in the entire dataset that fo-
cused on aesthetics of restaurant experiences, Horng and Hsu (2020) constructed a holistic aesthetic model of dining experiences.
They found that food itself, service, physical environment, as well as aesthetic traits of employees and other customers are factors
shaping diners' aesthetic experiences in restaurants. It should be noted that the data for the study were collected from restaurant
managers and therefore the findings represent how managers perceive guests' aesthetic experiences.

Effects of tourism aesthetics

The second theme includes the studies that investigated the role and effects of tourism aesthetics on other relevant variables,
most commonly, satisfaction, loyalty, and willingness to book. This theme is comprised of 13 studies that tended to be based on
quantitative (typically, cross-sectional survey) data. Two early examples are Breiby and Slåtten (2015) and Kirillova and Lehto
(2015) who statistically validated their initial qualitative results that were discussed in the previous section. For example,
Breiby and Slåtten (2015) found that the dimensions of Scenery, Cleanliness, and Genuineness had a direct effect on positive emo-
tions towards a nature-based destination, while only Scenery and Cleanliness had an (indirect) effect on the intention to recom-
mend the tourist destination to others. In their follow-up study, Breiby and Slåtten (2018) clarified that, while Scenery, Harmony,
and Genuineness were related to tourist satisfaction, only Cleanliness had a direct effect on their intention to revisit a destination.
In the context of rural tourism in China, Zhou et al. (2021) found that pleasure, interactivity, and recognizability were three main
factors affecting tourist satisfaction with aesthetic experiences in the destination.
Likewise, Kirillova and Lehto (2015) validated the Perceived Destination Aesthetic Qualities scale that consisted of Locale char-
acteristics, Scope, Upkeep, Accord, Perceived age, and Shape. They demonstrated that aesthetic dimensions of experiential nature
(e.g. Accord, Balance) are more likely to affect tourist satisfaction than the classic dimensions (e.g. Shape). The study also pro-
posed and tested the concept of aesthetic distance. Aesthetic distance denotes the difference between perceived aesthetic qualities
of home and those of a tourism destination environment. It was found that when tourists rate their home environment more pos-
itively in terms of Upkeep and Scope, they are likely to perceive a destination less beautiful. However, when it comes to vacation
satisfaction, only the aesthetic distance in terms of Scope exerted a significant effect. In their later work, based on the Attention
Restoration Theory (Kaplan, 1995), Kirillova and Lehto (2016) investigated the inter-connections between destination aesthetics
and restorative qualities. Zhang and Xu (2020) took the question of aesthetics in nature-based destinations further, by testing
structural relationships among landscapes' aesthetic qualities, tourists' aesthetic judgement, emotions, and loyalty. Not only
have the aesthetic qualities affected destination loyalty positively, but they also did that by means of activating tourists' aesthetic
judgement and emotions. An additional insight is that when tourists make literary associations with the landscape, the effect of
aesthetic qualities on tourist’ judgements and emotions get stronger.
Aside from aesthetics seen while at destinations, the literature was also interested in finding out how aesthetics is represented
in technology-mediated spaces through photographs. One such study is by Marder et al. (2021), which, through a series of exper-
iments, demonstrated that photos with professional aesthetics make a destination appear more visually appealing, driving tourists
to make bookings. The negative effect of aesthetics represented by amateur photographers is diminished when photographs are
presented alongside positive reviews and accompanied by a greater number of professionally taken photos. Yang et al. (2022))
explored how facial features of tour guides in their photos also affect tourists' decision making. Using the AI Facial Recognition
algorithm, as expected, they found that beauty scores and smiles were found to positively affect purchase decisions, and this effect
was stronger for women and guides in chauffeured tours.
The remaining studies in this theme are concerned with aesthetics in specific tourism and hospitality settings, e.g. hotels, mu-
seums. Through micro-ethnography conducted in My Son and Cham Museum in Vietnam, Trinh and Ryan (2016), for example,
zoomed into the role of aesthetics in tourists' responses to a heritage site. Genc and Genc (2022) discovered that aesthetic expe-
rience moderated the relationship between existential authenticity and satisfaction with a heritage site but did not play a role in
the relationship between objective, constructive authenticity and satisfaction. In the hotel setting, Kirillova and Chan (2018) ex-
perimentally compared aesthetic and functional value of hotels (as represented by photographs) in terms of motivating tourists
to make bookings and as tourists, what they expect the service quality is to be. Research found that high aesthetic value hotels
are more likely to have high booking rates and are perceived to provide better service quality along the SERVQUAL dimensions
of reliability, assurance, and tangibility. However, superior aesthetic value could not substitute for the “human” dimensions of
SERVQUAL – responsiveness and empathy. Also, in the context of hotels, with the focus on employees, Kirillova et al.'s (2020)
showed that back-of-the-house employees experience fewer aesthetic features than front-of-the-house employees, which affect
the former's well-being. Specifically, the effect of Variety of aesthetic features in the design of the workplace is weaker for back-
stage staff than for frontstage employees. This study marks the only research in the dataset that centers on stakeholders other
than tourists/guests. Apaolaza, Hartmann, Fernández-Robin, and Yáñez (2020) conduced a field experiment in the restaurant con-
text to find that perceived aesthetic value fully mediates the positive effect of natural plants on diners' satisfaction and loyalty.

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Aesthetics & sustainability

In comparison with the previous themes, Aesthetics & Sustainability is markedly less prominent in the dataset. It includes only
three studies that were interested in assessing tourists' aesthetic evaluations of changes in the environment. They jointly suggest
that natural landscapes degraded by anthropogenic influences can cause aesthetic depreciation. Salim et al. (2021) observed that up
to 30.2 % of tourists may not visit the glacier at the Mont Blanc massif in France, if its visibility and aesthetic qualities are hindered.
Although not focusing on sustainability per se, Scott et al. (2020) tested the usefulness of eye-tracking when measuring the
perceived beauty of landscapes from photographs. The methodology was also adopted by Le et al. (2019) to study how environ-
mental changes of the Great Barrier Reef are aesthetically evaluated by tourists. They found that the disappearance of sea fish and
turtles, degrading coral and water quality negatively influenced tourist aesthetic evaluations. This, the researchers argue, could re-
duce attractiveness of the Reef as a tourist destination and the number of visitors in the long term.

Producing aesthetic value

This meta-theme is concerned with the supply-related issues of creating and delivering aesthetics value in destinations and
tourism businesses for “consumption” by tourists, guests, and employees. This theme represents the minority (12/39) papers in
the dataset, pointing to uneven development of tourism knowledge on aesthetics that currently emphasizes the consumption sce-
nario. Interestingly, the studies comprising this overarching theme are among the earliest published on the topic (2008–2012).
This suggests that the initial studies on tourism aesthetics preferred to focus on the macro-issues of tourism destination as an aes-
thetic product. While some studies (e.g. Baggio & Moretti, 2018) in this group discussed 1) the Foundational Issues (often
philosophy-inspired) in Aesthetics Management (7/39), others (e.g. Wang et al., 2008) focused on understanding 2) Management
of Destination Aesthetics (5/39).

Foundational issues in aesthetics management

Two studies (Strannegård & Strannegård, 2012; Weaver, 2009) examined how hotels mobilize aesthetics and design in an ef-
fort to create what Weaver (2009) calls “commercialized enchantment.” For example, Strannegård and Strannegård (2012) em-
ployed ethnographic methods to understand how the so-called lifestyle hotels, through their aestheticization efforts embedded
in interior designs, sounds, light, and bodily dispositions, signal that they are crafted for a particular clientele. Other papers on
this theme (Baggio & Moretti, 2018; Knudsen et al., 2015; Maitland & Smith, 2009; Todd, 2009; Todd, 2012) approached aes-
thetics in tourism from a more system perspective – that of a tourism destination. Todd (2009) and Maitland and Smith
(2009) (both appeared in the edited book Philosophical Issues in Tourism) zoomed into nuances of aesthetics of nature-based
and urban destinations, respectively. Baggio and Moretti's (2018) conceptual work argued that beauty, along with creativity
and innovation, is part of the chain that results in a destination's socio-economic well-being. Also, within this theme, Knudsen
et al. (2015) proposed that aesthetic judgement goes beyond the category of the beautiful and should include the sublime and
the picturesque. Building on the idea that aesthetics functions as an ideology, they purport that the beautiful is a manifestation
of the power of the state; the sublime naturalizes the relationship between humans and the nature; and the picturesque marks
class distinction.

Management of destination aesthetics

The second theme is represented by five case study publications that focused on tourism aesthetics in a particular destination.
Wang et al. (2008) studied Zhangjiajia National Park in Wuling Yuan (China) to understand the importance of aesthetic values in
tourism development. Although no data was collected from tourists, the researchers found that aesthetic value of the nature-
based attraction had decreased due to tourist activities and construction work of tourism infrastructure. Ely (2003)'s study, one
of the earliest in the dataset, investigated the role of 19th century guidebooks in the formation of the public perception of
Volga River (Russia) as worthy of aesthetic appreciation and of visit in the pre-revolutionary Russia. The study is a historical
look into how travel writing consistently and systematically shapes the touristic conception of the natural landscape, resulting
in tourism development.
Speake and Kennedy (2019) and Speake et al. (2021) approach the problem of changing destination aesthetics from the geo-
graphical perspective using the case of Valletta (Malta). Speake and Kennedy (2019), for instance, showed how placemaking of
the dominant aesthetics in the destination represents the tastes of the affluent elite, with little consideration given to tourists'
preferences and expectations. Inspired by Gramsi's (1971) notion “common sense,” (which itself is partially derived from
Kant's (1790/1987) “sensus communis”) the researchers also developed the concept of “aesthetic common sense” to denote the
phenomenon when “aesthetic preferences of the affluent elite are adopted, largely without being questioned. They are becoming
the ‘aesthetic norm’ and ‘usualised’” (Speake & Kennedy, 2019, p. 7). Driven by the neoliberal agenda, the city's authorities are
drawn into this preferred gaze, which is then produced and reproduced by architects and planners. The later study by the
same group (Speake et al., 2021) presented a novel approach – a multi-scalar cartographic and visual techniques – to analyze vi-
sual aesthetic markets of gentrification in tourist destination with the example of Valletta. Oh (2021) developed a multi-method
case study of an Instagrammable village in Jeju Island in South Korea. It documents how the seemingly ordinary place, once sub-
jected to the aestheticization through the so-called Insta-gaze, emerges as a trendy tourism destination whose digital representa-
tion obscures the destination objectification, commodification, and touristification.
To sum up, the supply side of tourism aesthetics remains a rather marginalized area of research, which is particularly the case,
if compared with the volume of the demand-side analysis.

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Critique and future research directions

The systematic analysis of the literature revealed that tourism and hospitality aesthetics is a research domain that is still in its in-
fancy. The present section aims to critique the current state of knowledge on tourism and hospitality aesthetics and pave avenues for
future research. This critique does not directly follow from the thematic analysis presented above. It is rather the result of the author's
own reflection, having evaluated the state of the tourism aesthetic scholarship against the contemporary tourism issues.

Aesthetic appreciation: Inputs, experiences, and outcomes

The analyzed literature lacks conceptual clarity regarding the notions of “aesthetic judgement,” “aesthetic experience,”
“aesthetic appreciation,” “aesthetic qualities/features.” In psychology, the aesthetic appreciation process is considered to be
consisting of three parts: inputs, various perceptual processes, and outputs (e.g. Leder et al., 2004). In Leder et al.'s (2004)
well-regarded model of aesthetic appreciation, for example, the work of art and the context in which it is presented are inputs;
continuous perceptual (cognitive and affective) evaluation processes are understood as an experience; while aesthetic judgements
and aesthetic emotions are outputs resulting from the aesthetic appreciation process.
The analyzed studies, however, often used the terms aesthetic judgements, preferences, and experiences interchangeably. Genc
and Genc (2022), for example, measured the construct of “aesthetic experience” by four items that hint on aesthetic judgement
(“I think that Midyat has a great beauty without needing words”), on inputs (“The scenery at Midyat is unique” and “The facilities
at the scenic spot are in harmony with the cultural environment”), and on aesthetic emotions (“Visiting Midyat makes me feel
spiritual sublimations”) at the same time. Others (e.g. Breiby & Slåtten, 2015; Kirillova & Chan, 2018; Kirillova & Lehto, 2015) fo-
cused on how destination/hotel context (inputs) directly affects aesthetic judgements and emotions (outputs), without accounting
for the experiential nature of tourism aesthetics. Zheng et al. (2022) attempted to overcome the (subject-object) distinction with
the concept of Yijing, which implies a more holistic process of aesthetic appreciation without separating the experience into aes-
thetic properties and judgements, which is also somewhat in line with Benjamin's aura and Böhme's atmosphere. However, over-
all, the current state of the literature contributes to the phenomenon of aesthetic experiences in tourism and hospitality remaining
a black box, in which aesthetic features are placed and which magically produces aesthetic judgements. This presents the need
and the research opportunity to deconstruct in terms of what makes an experience an aesthetic experience and to understand
the building blocks of such experiences in tourism.

Diversity of aesthetic experiences

The review showed that all empirical studies and the overwhelming majority of conceptual work equated tourism aesthetics
with beauty and its variations. While it is a conventional understanding, aesthetic theory distinguishes among the beautiful, the
sublime, and the picturesque. Among the reviewed, Todd (2009, 2012)) and Knudsen et al. (2015) were the only authors recog-
nizing and arguing for this diversity of aesthetic experiences in tourism, while Ely's (2003) analysis focused on the idea of pictur-
esque as occurring in Russian arts, literature, and guidebooks. Many philosophers believe that beauty is the result of proportion or
perfection of its features that is sensorily pleasing. According to Plato, for example, there is an objective and perfect form of
beauty. He introduced the concept of mimesis (imitation), claiming that beautiful things are imitations of beauty itself, and an art-
ist, by recreating a beautiful object on canvas, attempts to replicate the object that is already an imitation of beauty. Aristotle con-
templated that beauty of an object is defined by its properties. Size, order, proportions, and other characteristics are what make
objects attractive. Tourists are likely to experience the beautiful as it is evidenced in sculpture, painting, and architecture
(Knudsen et al., 2015).
A qualitatively different aesthetic experience is that of the sublime. The sublime is distinct from other aesthetic experiences
mainly due to its capacity to invoke intense emotions and to inspire awe (Burke, 1757/1998). Because of intense affective re-
sponses, the sublime can also be characterized as astonishment, terror, horror, and distress (Shusterman, 2005). The sublime is
thus paradoxical because when experienced as anticipation of pain and death, the sublime also serves as a counter-assertion to
life (Knudsen et al., 2015). The sublime can be experienced through engagement with nature such as stormy oceans, a chasm
in a mountain range, or a sheer power of a waterfall (albeit all viewed from the place of safety).
The idea of picturesque evolved when the 18th century philosophers brought the appreciation of nature to an idealized form
(Todd, 2009). Specifically, a landscape can be judged as beautiful if it has the perceived quality of being placed on a postcard. The
picturesque rejects the beautiful as being too perfect but also rejects the sublime as being too threatening (Knudsen et al., 2015).
Unlike beauty, the picturesque is characterized by irregularity, roughness, variation, yet, unlike the sublime, the experience of the
picturesque removes an observer from the landscape so that it is experienced as a scene (Townsend, 1997). Knudsen et al. (2015)
note that the picturesque is almost entirely visual and includes what should be seen and it eliminates the elements that do not fit
the scene. In tourism, the picturesque can be experienced when admiring vistas that have been specifically designed to deliver the
sense of visual pleasure. A brightly lit city skyline can be one such example.
The interest of modern aesthetics goes beyond beauty as it expands its scope from properties that please aesthetic senses (e.g.
the beautiful) to those that could induce fear, uneasiness, and displeasure (e.g. the sublime, the ugly) (Brady, 2016). Aesthetics is
no longer restricted to its positive quality but also incorporates the opposite – the ugly. Yet, all the studies in this review exclu-
sively focused on positive aesthetic experiences and judgements. Although few papers discussed deterioration in aesthetic qual-
ities of destinations (e.g. Le et al., 2019; Salim et al., 2021), none have explicitly considered the aesthetic category of ugliness

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in tourism (although Todd, 2012 mentioned such a possibility). Contradicting the common understanding that ugliness is the
absence of beauty, Brady (2016) expands on Aristotle's and Kant's argument that ugliness can be rendered as beautiful through
artistic representation. She further proposes that ugly environments are a separate aesthetic category that could be classified as
1) relative ugliness (which is relative to a norm), 2) inherent ugliness (which is not relative to any established norm), and 3) ap-
parent ugliness (which should be considered without a context). Brady (2016, p. 96) makes a case for investigating ugly environ-
ments because “When ugliness is mixed with fascination and curiosity, this explains why we might be engaged by ugly things –
(…) ugliness is not synonymous with being boring, dull or insignificant. There is no doubt that ugly things can capture our
imagination in some ways, at least because of their novelty.”
Diversity of aesthetic experiences, both apparently positive and negative, presents many research opportunities for tourism,
the context typically with competing aesthetic interest. As well evidenced by Speake and Kennedy (2019), a city's aesthetics
often reflect the preferences of the affluent elite, as opposed to those of tourists' or other residents'. While such destination aes-
thetic may be related to positive aesthetic judgements for some, they may produce the opposite effect on others. The aesthetic
categories of sublime, picturesque, and ugly would be instrumental in deciphering the power relationships in destinations; to in-
terrogate potential antagonism between tourists, residents, and tourism developers, as well as to understand variability in tourist
aesthetic judgements. In addition, as Martini and Sharma (2022) (this Collection) have recently demonstrated that the aesthetic
category of sublime is useful in understanding tourist affective experiences at dark and post-disaster tourist sites. This points to
the paradoxical idea that even the ugly could be attractive for tourists if it entices strong emotions and helps form memorable
experiences.

Aesthetics is multisensory

The analysis indicated that overwhelming majority of the studies have either exclusively considered visual tourism aesthetic or
tangentially mentioned other senses. As an example of the former, Wang et al. (2008) investigated the visual pollution created by
tourism development in Wuling Yuan, while all Breiby's (2015) dimensions of aesthetic experiences are visual. As the example of
the latter, in Kirillova et al.'s (2014), only 3 out of 21 dimensions of aesthetic judgement are related to sounds. Only one paper
(Kirillova and Wassler (2020)) in the dataset unambiguously positioned tourism aesthetics as multisensory. Conceptualizing tour-
ism aesthetic experiences as a sum of multisensory perceptions made possible by somatic, auditory, visual, olfactory, and even
gustatory human senses, they argue that lived experiences of beauty are indeed embodied. Such a position is also in line with
the atmospheric turn positioning a human actor inside an atmosphere, as opposed to viewing a tourism/resident as an external
observer. Philosophically, Burke (1757/1998) posited that beauty is imagined not only in terms of how it looks but also how it
sounds, tastes, smells, and feels, as he developed his aesthetic theory in relation to each sensory modality. As aesthetic atmo-
spheres can affect human states (Böhme, 2017), understanding how aesthetics is perceived and transmitted through all five
senses would be critical in advancing the literature, for example, on consumers experience design in tourism and hospitality,
among other streams.
From another perspective, all reviewed research assumed that tourism actors are equal in their ability to perceive tourism en-
vironments through the five senses and therefore produce desirable outcomes. This, however, may not reflect the reality of tour-
ists and residents whose senses may be impaired to various degrees. Yang and Kirillova (2023) have recently conceptualized
tourist agency as consisting of capacity to act and capacity to produce. While the first refers to the freedom of tourists to exercise
tourism mobilities, the second implies the ability to produce desirable tourism outcomes (e.g. satisfaction, positive aesthetic
judgements). Placing this idea alongside tourism aesthetics means that two tourists traveling together may not see tourism aes-
thetics the same way, not only because of different preferences but also because their senses may not detect and process atmo-
spheres uniformly. While one tourist relies on his/her five senses, his/her companion with an impaired sense of smell would miss
out on this important aspect of aesthetic experience. Research on multisensory aesthetics in tourism therefore would have impor-
tant policy implications towards how to design tourism spaces not only accessible to tourists with sense impairments but also be
able to compensate for deficiencies in certain aspects of multisensory experiences. As tourism atmospheres are often part of daily
spaces of destination residents, such a research direction is also important for urban planning and destination development.

Aesthetics beyond Kant and stimulus-organism-response

In its origins, aesthetics is a branch of philosophy concerned with the notions of beauty and taste. Although many thinkers
have written on the subject of beauty, Kant's famous “Critique of Judgement” (1790/1987) tends to conceptually dominate tour-
ism research on aesthetics. Kant (1790/1987) proposed that the judgement of beauty is subjective, yet universal. Specifically, his
idea of disinterestedness suggests that one takes pleasure in something because it is beautiful rather than judging it as beautiful,
because it is a pleasurable feeling. It also suggests that beautiful objects do not require an underlying concept or purpose.
One can observe that the analyzed studies have the tendency to borrow the main theoretical premise from Kant's aesthetic
theory, the related philosophy of environmental aesthetics and environmental psychology. Much tourism aesthetics discussion
also revolved around Kant's classic yet imperfect idea of aesthetic judgement, which implies the existence of the classic ontolog-
ical duality of an object and a subject. Current research on aesthetics in tourism tends to treat a tourism destination (and its res-
idents) as possessing aesthetic properties that act as objects to be appreciated by tourist subjects. For example, Kirillova et al.
(2014) explicitly discuss Kant's idea of disinterestedness and of aesthetic judgement before moving on to introducing pivotal
works of environmental philosophers (e.g. Berleant, 2005; Hepburn, 1966). Breiby (2014, 2015) heavily draws on empirical

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studies on landscape preference, a stream of literature in environmental psychology that is also conceptually based on Kant's aes-
thetic judgement. Marketing-oriented studies tend to build, even though not always explicitly, on the Stimulus-Organism-
Response and related frameworks (e.g. Zhang & Xu, 2020). For instance, Alfakhri et al. (2018), Kirillova and Wassler (2020),
Horng and Hsu (2020) utilize Bitner's (1992) servicescape and Kotler's (1973) atmospherics, which, in themselves, are extensions
of Kant's ideas and environmental psychology principles in an organizational setting.
An alternative viewpoint comes from the German philosopher Böhme (2017) who draws attention to quasi-objective qualities
of aesthetics of environments, which means that they are neither objects nor subjects. He argues that aesthetic atmospheres are
“the shared reality of the perceiver and the perceived” (Böhme, 2017, p. 23), and therefore the central aesthetic question “What
makes an object to be perceived as beautiful by a subject?” and should be replaced with “What is the connection between prop-
erties of an object and the atmosphere it emanates?” In other words, Böhme rejects the rather Cartesian idea of aesthetic judge-
ment (Kant, 1790/1987) and calls for more phenomenological exploration of aesthetics as it appears in a perceiver's lifeworld. To
move the field of tourism aesthetics forward, the present review welcomes new research methodologies and methods of data col-
lection that are able to transcend the object-subject duality and to capture the unique position of tourism atmospheres. One step
away from the Kantian perspective is Lee's (2022) (this Collection) work on culinary aesthetics that advanced the term “culinary
aesthetics” based on the US philosopher Dewey's theory on art and experience. Another example is Martini and Sharma (2022)’s
study on the transformative potential of post-disaster tourism (also this Collection) that draws on the idea of sublime-as-affect to
overcome this subject-object dichotomy.

Aesthetics and well-being outcomes

With rare exceptions, studies in the dataset are concerned with the effects of aesthetics on destination- or organization-
relevant outcomes, e.g. tourist satisfaction, loyalty, booking intention. Such studies tended to result in implications for destination
marketing and consumer experience management and suggestions to enhance positive returns for destinations and organizations.
Aesthetics, however, has been also linked to individual-level outcomes such as well-being. For example, de Botton (2003) asks: Do
beautiful landscapes mean happiness? Such a question shifts the focus and goal of tourism aesthetics research from positive out-
comes for destinations to indicators related to human fulfillment, health, good life, and general well-being.
This emphasis on well-being does not exclude destinations themselves and their residents. Cities, towns, and landscapes are
rarely planned as tourist destinations, and thus the interests of tourists are not always considered in these initial plans. Function-
ality for residents, which often reflects the aesthetic tastes of the elite (Speake & Kennedy, 2019), is normally of primary concern.
With the development of tourism, visitors begin to constitute a separate group that “consumes” a destination, including their
landscapes and architecture, and for whom aesthetic value becomes an economic offering. As current research indicates (Oh,
2021), such touristification results in aestheticization of residents' living place and prioritization of aesthetic tastes of tourists.
The aesthetics therefore becomes the political and, in this sense, mediates the relationship between Consuming and Producing
aesthetic value. To this date, however, little public policy guidance is available on how, in the context of free market capitalism,
neoliberalism but also of central planning, to produce aesthetic value in a way that its consumption results in well-being of the
destination as a system. In other words, tourism aesthetic research, which has so far prioritized managerial implications as a
final outcome, should begin to aim at producing implications in order to devise public policy for the just society.

Aesthetics across cultures

With exception of Zheng et al. (2022) who relied on the Chinese concept of Yijing, the studies analyzed in this review are the-
oretically rooted in the Western European philosophical tradition, even though the empirical context ranged from China and
Vietnam to Australia, USA, and Malta, among others. While Kant argues that aesthetics is disinterested and therefore universal
common elements of aesthetics are impossible to capture with certainty, outside tourism, there exists empirical evidence showing
that cultural background influences aesthetic preferences. For instance, Bao et al. (2016) compared the preferences for a tradi-
tional Chinese vs. traditional Western (Renaissance-inspired) painting between Chinese and Western art appreciators. Results in-
dicated a significant interaction effect between the aesthetic tradition of the painting and the cultural group: while Chinese
participants gave higher aesthetic scores to traditional Chinese paintings than to Western ones. Western participants gave higher
aesthetic scores to traditional Western paintings. Eastern aesthetics particularly have been heavily influenced by Buddhist and
Taoist principles (Inada, 1997). Unlike the Greek ideals of beauty populated by Plato and Aristotle, Japanese aesthetics embrace
the beauty of the imperfect, impermanent and incomplete (Juniper, 2011). Theoretical lenses beyond the Western European in-
tellectual tradition are necessary to understand increasingly diverse tourist markets and destinations. As aesthetics is closely
linked to culture, tourism researchers are cautioned against making sweeping generalizations such as “Eastern,” “Western,” or
“African” aesthetics, as there exists a great diversity within each cultural and aesthetic tradition.

Conclusion

This research aimed at producing the first of its kind systematic literature review on the topic of tourism aesthetics. Based on
the dataset of 39 studies, it identified major trends and themes that guided research on beauty and aesthetics up to first half of
2022, critiqued the current state of tourism and hospitality scholarship on the topic, and proposed directions for research to fur-
ther advance tourism theory and practice. Questioning the status quo, such as challenging Kantian ideas that are applicable to

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K. Kirillova Annals of Tourism Research 100 (2023) 103553

artworks but less relevant to environments and atmospheres, and critiquing marketing-oriented and neoliberal approached to
consumer aesthetics in tourism are necessary. In terms of the former, theoretical lenses beyond the Western European intellectual
tradition are necessary to understand increasingly diverse tourist markets and destinations. In terms of the latter, the perspectives
of destination residents on aesthetics of their living spaces have so far been absent from tourism research. On a larger scale, aes-
thetics is not restricted to the ideas of beauty but also incorporate its variations as well as its opposite – the ugly. With this, the
review officially launches the Curated Collection “Beauty & Aesthetics in Tourism” at Annals of Tourism Research. The Collection is
hoped to popularize and to inspire further research on this critical issue.
Finally, this review is not free of limitations. Like the majority of papers on literature reviews, this article exclusively consid-
ered research published in English, leaving much of tourism scholarship published in other languages outside the scope of this
review. It is likely that high quality aesthetics research is published in tourism and hospitality journals in other languages. Simi-
larly, only papers appearing in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters were included, which omitted research disseminated as,
for example, conference presentations or books. The keywords used for literature search included general terms “aesthetic” and
“beauty,” which naturally excluded publications that focused on a separate aesthetic category (e.g. pastoral) without referring
to aesthetics more generally. Future systematic reviews should aim to be more inclusive in their scope. Lastly, the five themes
should not be seen as mutually exclusive as studies could simultaneously contribute to more than one area.
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2023.103553.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Ksenia Kirillova: Conceptualization, Data collection, Data analysis, Writing.

Funding information

None.

Declaration of interest

None.

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Ksenia Kirillova is an Associate Professor of marketing at Institut Paul Bocuse. Her research interests are consumer (tourism) experience, tourism/hospitality/wine mar-
keting, and aesthetics.

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