Creating experience value in tourism

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Creating Experience Value in Tourism

2nd Edition
This page intentionally left blank
Creating Experience Value in Tourism
2nd Edition

Edited by

Nina K. Prebensen
Professor of Marketing and Director of the School of Business and
Economics, Uit, The Arctic University of Norway, Norway

Joseph S. Chen
Professor of Tourism, Hospitality and Event Management,
Indiana University, Bloomington, USA

Muzaffer S. Uysal
Professor and Chair of the Department of Hospitality and Tourism
Management, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA
 CABI is a trading name of CAB International
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© CAB International 2018. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by
any means, electronically, mechanically, by photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission
of the copyright owners.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library, London, UK.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Prebensen, Nina K., editor. | Chen, Joseph S., editor. | Uysal, Muzaffer, editor.
Title: Creating experience value in tourism / edited by Nina K. Prebensen, Professor of Marketing and
the Director of the School of Business and Economics, UiT, The Arctic University of Norway, Norway,
Joseph S. Chen, Professor of Tourism, Hospitality and Event Management, Indiana University, Bloomington,
USA, Muzaffer S. Uysal, Professor and Chair of the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management,
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA.
Description: Second edition. | Wallingford, Oxfordshire ; Boston, MA : CABI, [2018] | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017054577 (print) | LCCN 2017060805 (ebook) | ISBN 9781786395047 (pdf) |
ISBN 9781786395054 (ePub) | ISBN 9781786395030 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Tourism--Psychological aspects. | Tourists--Attitudes. | Tourists--Psychology.
Classification: LCC G155.A1 (ebook) | LCC G155.A1 C735 2018 (print) | DDC 338.4/791--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017054577

ISBN-13: 978 1 78639 503 0 (hbk)

978 1 78639 504 7 (PDF)
978 1 78639 505 4 (ePub)

Commissioning editor: Alexandra Lainsbury

Production editor: Marta Patiño

Typeset by AMA DataSet Ltd, Preston, UK

Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
 Contents

Preface vii

Contributors ix

1 Co-creation of Tourist Experience: Scope, Definition and Structure 1

Nina K. Prebensen, Joseph S. Chen and Muzaffer S. Uysal

2 Dynamic Drivers of Tourist Experiences 11

Joseph S. Chen, Nina K. Prebensen and Muzaffer S. Uysal

3 Tourist Experience Value: Tourist Experience and Life Satisfaction 21

Peter Björk

4 Conceptualization of Value Co-creation in the Tourism Context 31

Prakash K. Chathoth, Gerardo R. Ungson, Robert J. Harrington, Levent Altinay,
Fevzi Okumus and Eric S. W. Chan

5 Why, Oh Why, Oh Why, Do People Travel Abroad? 44

Graham M. S. Dann

6 Self-congruity Theory in Travel and Tourism: Another Update 57

M. Joseph Sirgy, Dong-Jin Lee and Grace B. Yu

7 Moving People: a Conceptual Framework for Understanding How Visitor

Experiences can be Enhanced by Mindful Attention to Interest 70
Tove I. Dahl

8 Co-creation of Experience Value: a Tourist Behaviour Approach 83

Lidia Andrades and Frederic Dimanche

9 Authenticity as a Value Co-creator of Tourism Experiences 98

Haywantee Ramkissoon and Muzaffer S. Uysal

v
vi Contents

10 Experience Co-creation Depends on Rapport-building: Training Implications

for the Service Frontline 110
Vincent P. Magnini and K. Roach

11 Approaches for the Evaluation of Visitor Experiences at Tourist Attractions 122

Øystein Jensen

12 Storytelling in a Co-creation Perspective 137

Line Mathisen

13 Tourist Information Search: A DIY Approach to Creating Experience Value 148

Tor Korneliussen

14 Co-creation of Value and Social Media: How? 159

Atila Yüksel and Akan Yanik

15 Prices and Value in Co-produced Hospitality and Tourism Experiences 180

Xiaojuan (Jady) Yu and Zvi Schwartz

16 Value Creation: a Tourism Mobilities Perspective 192

Bruce Prideaux

17 Guide Performance: Co-created Experiences for Tourist Immersion 203

Lena Mossberg, Monica Hanefors and Ann Heidi Hansen

18 Value Creation and Co-creation in Tourist Experiences: an East Asian Cultural

Knowledge Framework Approach 215
Young-Sook Lee and Nina K. Prebensen

19 Perspectives on Value Creation – Resource Configuration 228

Nina K. Prebensen, Muzaffer S. Uysal and Joseph S. Chen

20 Value Co-creation: Challenges and Future Research Directions 238

Nina K. Prebensen, Muzaffer S. Uysal and Joseph S. Chen

Index 249
 Preface

We are pleased to have the opportunity to produce a second edition of this book. Our contributors
also had an opportunity to revisit their respective chapters and revise them as appropriate. And, they
did so with diligence. The focus of this edition is the same. The roles of hosts and guests are changing
continuously. This is a consequence of technological innovations and developments, but also of peo-
ple’s changing mindsets: how and why tourists travel, what tourists value during a tourist journey,
and how this value may be produced and consumed before, during and after a trip. Value creation as
a theoretical construct as well as a practical approach, is debated. This expanded edition of the book
attempts to outline value creation in tourist experiences, theoretically and practically, in order to
obtain new understandings and models to help identify how value creation is changing within the
tourism industry and demonstrate ways in which both tourists and settings can proactively take part
in this change, thus becoming a vital element in its success.
The traditional view of value as something produced by one actor and consumed by another
has been strongly debated in marketing and tourism literature within the last two decades. New log-
ics supersede the traditional perspective of production and consumption as separate entities, and
propose that the customer always participates in the value creation processes and that without the
customer no value is actually generated. This becomes even more relevant in the hedonic and eudai-
monic consumption of tourism goods and services. The fundamental idea is that various needs of
consumers may lead to various degrees of participation in different phases of value creation. Tourist
consumption is about travelling for personal enjoyment, which generates hedonic value for the cus-
tomer. The customer participates in value creation because it is appealing and attractive.
Experience value can be created and/or co-created by the tourist alone, with fellow tourists,
and/or with the service provider in a certain context or environment. However, in tourism, the tour-
ist has to be present in the experience process for the value to be recognized. Current research pro-
vides a multitude of approaches to value creation and co-creation, and those approaches may
comprise a variety of characteristics, and imply others, in attempting to outline the essence of the
concept. The wide variety of contributions in the present book, both in terms of focus, scale and level
of abstraction, has resulted in a complex setting of definitions, perspectives and interpretations of
how tourists as customers create value alone, jointly with firms and with other actors. By including
two major aspects of value creation, that is psychological and physiological aspects of a tourist jour-
ney, the book puts forward fundamental ideas for how to acknowledge and handle tourist experience
as a value-based construct and personal narratives. The tourist interest, involvement, motivation,
use of resources and partaking in value creation affect tourist value perceptions and future

vii
viii Preface

intentions. Furthermore, the tourist firm and service providers may enhance the firm value through
developing a platform for enhanced experience value for the tourist.
The complex nature of the value creation concept may threaten its theoretical development.
This book aims to provide an analytical and systematic clarification of the approaches and suggest a
shared understanding of the differences, providing both tourism marketing scholars and practitio-
ners with new and practical knowledge with which to increase the relevance of the concept to tour-
ism firms and organizations. We hope that readers will find the text insightful and challenging.

Nina K. Prebensen
Joseph S. Chen
Muzaffer S. Uysal
 Contributors

Levent Altinay is Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship in the Business School at Oxford
Brookes University. His research interests lie in the areas of entrepreneurship, strategic alliances
and international business. Using primarily qualitative methods as well as mixed methods, he is
particularly interested in how entrepreneurs start up and develop their businesses and how
firms establish partnerships internationally. He is the Editor-in-chief of the Service Industries
Journal and a co-author of the textbooks Planning Research in Hospitality and Tourism and
Entrepreneurship in Hospitality and Tourism. Email: laltinay@brookes.ac.uk
Lidia Andrades is Assistant Professor of Marketing at University of Extremadura in southwest of
Spain. Her research interests are about tourist behaviour, destination competitiveness and
multivariate analysis. Lidia is the Director of NETOUR (Network for excellence in tourism
through organizations and universities in Russia). Email: andrades@netour.eu
Peter Björk is Professor of Marketing at Hanken School of Economics in Finland. He is involved in
research addressing issues such as service innovation and design, consumer experience,
destination development and branding, and ecotourism. He has authored articles published in
various tourism journals. Email: peter.bjork@hanken.fi
Eric Chan is a certified hospitality educator (CHE) and Associate Professor for the School of Hotel
and Tourism Management at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. In addition to conducting a
range of training programmes for the industry, he has served as ‘Hotel Management Specialist’
assisting the Hong Kong Quality Assurance Agency (HKQAA) audit team to assess the ISO
9000 quality management system of hotels. His research interests include hotel environmental
management and tourist behaviour. Email: eric.sw.chan@polyu.edu.hk
Prakash Chathoth is Professor in the Department of Marketing and Information Systems, School
of Business Administration, American University of Sharjah, UAE. His research interests
include topics related to strategic and service management/marketing with a particular
emphasis on the service sector, notably the tourism and hospitality industry. Email: pkchathoth@
aus.edu
Joseph S. Chen is Professor of Tourism, Hospitality and Event Management in the School of
Public Health, Indiana University at Bloomington. His research interest entails sustainable
management, marketing and social impact of tourism. Email: joechen@indiana.edu
Tove I. Dahl is Professor of educational psychology in the Department of Psychology at the UiT, The
Arctic University of Norway. Cross-cultural encounters have long been the focus of her academic

ix
x Contributors

work – most recently through the Norwegian Research Council’s Northern InSights program –
and her work at the Concordia Language Villages. Email: Tove.dahl@uit.no
Graham M.S. Dann has been researching tourist motivation and allied topics such as tourism
promotion for the past four decades, and was recognized for his contribution to their
understanding by the award of a higher doctorate. He is a founder member of the International
Academy for the Study of Tourism and of the research committee on international tourism of
the International Sociological Association. Email: dann_graham@yahoo.co.uk
Frédéric Dimanche is Professor of Marketing and Director of the Center for Tourism Management
at SKEMA Business School on the French Riviera. His research interests include tourist
behaviour and destination/tourism organization management and marketing. Frédéric is a past
President of the Travel and Tourism Research Association Europe. Email: fdimanche@
ryerson.ca
Monica Hanefors has more than 35 years’ experience in the teaching of tourism and hospitality in
Sweden and elsewhere. She has wide experience as a writer, educator and consultant and has
published a range of articles and books on tourism and hospitality. Her research interests
explore aspects of tourist behaviour, gourmet travel and tour employees’ performance. Email:
monica_hanefors@yahoo.se
Ann Heidi Hansen has a PhD from Nord University; Norway. Her research interests are tourism
experiences and consumer immersion. She has also been teaching at a course in Experience
Design at the University of Nordland. Email: ann.heidi.hansen@uin.no
Robert Harrington is Professor in the School of Hospitality Business Management, Washington
State University. His research areas include strategy management, hospitality innovation
management and food and wine. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Culinary Science &
Technology and author of Food and Wine Pairing: A Sensory Experience. Email: rharrington@
tricity.wsu.edu
Øystein Jensen is Professor in Marketing and Tourism at Bodø Graduate School of Business,
University of Nordland and the Norwegian School of Hotel Management at the University of
Stavanger, Norway. He has a PhD in marketing from Aalborg Business School, Denmark. He has
been a leader of the tourism research programme, Northern Insights, funded by the Norwegian
Research Council, and involved in several other projects on tourism, marketing and development.
His main interests involve exchange relationships, attraction development and local sustainable
tourism development. Email: Oystein.jensen@uis.no
Tor Korneliussen is Professor of Marketing at Nord University Business School, Norway. His
research interests include tourist information search, products and product perceptions;
international marketing and multivariate data analysis. He has published in journals such as
Journal of Travel Research, Industrial Marketing Management and Journal of Business Research.
Email: Tor.korneliussen@nord.no
Dong-Jin Lee is Professor of Marketing at Yonsei University, South Korea. His research interests
include relationship marketing, business ethics and quality-of-life studies. His research has been
published in journals such as the Journal of Marketing and Journal of the Academy of Marketing
Science. Email: djlee81@yonsei.ac.kr
Young-Sook Lee is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management,
Griffith University, Australia. Her research interest area includes East Asian tourism approached
from cultural philosophies, sociological and literary perspectives. Email: young-sook.lee@
uit.no
Vincent P. Magnini is Associate Professor and undergraduate program coordinator in the
Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Virginia Tech University in the USA.
Email: magnini@vt.edu
Line Mathisen is Associate Professor at UiT, The Arctic University of Norway, Campus Alta, Norway.
Her research interests include marketing and consumer behaviour. More specifically, her work
examines the effects of storytelling, and storytelling in interaction processes. Email: Line.
mathisen@uit.no
 Contributors xi

Lena Mossberg is Professor of Marketing in the School of Business, Economics and Law at
the University of Gothenburg and also Professor II at University of Nordland. Her interests
include tourist behaviour and she has published several articles on guide performance. She has
been involved in several international tourism and marketing programmes, not least in her
capacity as tourism management expert for the UN and the EU. Email: lena.mossberg@handels.
gu.se
Fevzi Okumus is CFHLA Preeminent Professor at University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of
Hospitality Management. He is the Editor of the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality
Management (IJCHM). His research areas include strategy implementation, competitive
advantage, crisis management, experience marketing and destination marketing. He has
published widely in top-tier journals and has over 220 publications (journal articles, books,
book chapters, conference presentations and reports). Email: Fezi.okumus@ucf.no
Nina K. Prebensen is Professor of Marketing and the Director of the School of Business and
Economics, UiT, The Arctic University of Norway, Norway. She holds a professor II position at
South-East University College. Her research interests include consumer experience value,
destination marketing and business strategy. She is co-editor for Journal of Travel Research, the
International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management and Journal of Business Research.
She has been involved in numerous projects and had a leading position in in the research
programme ‘Service Innovation and Tourist Experiences in the High North: The Co-Creation of
Values for Consumers, Firms and the Tourism Industry’. She has published numerous papers,
book chapters and books within the field of tourism and marketing. Email: Nina.prebensen@
uit.no
Bruce Prideaux is Professor of Marketing and Tourism Management at James Cook University,
Australia. Current research interests include tourism transport, climatic change, agri-tourism,
ecotourism and military heritage. He has published seven books, over 200 papers, chapters and
conference papers on a range of tourism issues and currently supervises seven PhD students.
Email: b.prideaux@cqu.edu.au
Haywantee Ramkissoon is Associate Professor at School of Marketing, Curtin Business School,
Curtin University, Perth, Australia; Department of Marketing, Monash University, Melbourne,
Australia; Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Isenberg School of
Management, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. She holds two
doctoral degrees in Tourism and Applied Environmental Psychology; her postdoctoral experience
focuses on behaviour change. She is book review editor for Current Issues in Tourism and
Research Note Editor for Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management, and serves on the
editorial boards of 15 respected journals. Email: haywantee.ramkissoon@curtin.edu.au
K. Roach was an undergraduate research assistant in the Department of Hospitality and Tourism
Management at Virginia Tech University in the USA. Email: kmr2840t.edu
Zvi Schwartz is a professor in the Department of the Hospitality Business Management in the Alfred
Lerner College of Business and Economics at the University of Delaware. Prior to joining the
University of Delaware, he was the J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Senior Faculty Fellow for
Hospitality Finance and Revenue Management at Virginia Tech. His scholarly research and
industry consulting focus on the core technical and strategic elements of the revenue
management cycle: forecasting, optimization and monitoring; as well as the closely-related
topics of strategic pricing and consumer and firm decisions in advanced reservation
environments. Email: zvi@udel.edu
M. Joseph Sirgy is a management psychologist and Professor of Marketing, and Virginia Real Estate
Research Fellow at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA. He has published
extensively in the area of marketing, business ethics, and quality of life. Email: sirgy@vt.edu
Gerardo R. Ungson is the Y.F. Chang Endowed Chair and Professor of International Business at San
Francisco State University. His teaching and research areas are global strategy, strategic
alliances, poverty alleviation and Asian business, and he has co-authored six books. Email:
bungson@sfsu.edu
xii Contributors

Muzaffer S. Uysal is a professor and chair of the Department of Hospitality and Tourism
Management, Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst,
USA. He is a member of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism, the Academy of
Leisure Sciences, and serves as co-founder of Tourism Analysis. He has also authored and
co-authored a significant number of articles, book chapters, monographs and books. His
research interests centre on tourism demand/supply interaction, tourism marketing and quality
of life research in tourism. Email: muysal@isenberg.umass.edu
Akan Yanik graduated from the Communication Faculty of Ege University in 2007, completing his
master’s degree at the same university. His focus has been on information communication
technologies, including theoretically oriented publications and (award-winning) practical
projects. Since 2009 he has been both a lecturer and a graduate student at the Adnan Menderes
University, Turkey. Email: akanyanik@hotmail.com
Grace B. Yu is an assistant professor of Marketing at Duksung Women’s University, South Korea.
Her research interests include experiential consumption, consumer happiness and quality of
life studies. Her research has been published in journals such as Journal of Business Research and
Journal of Travel Research. Email: yuxiaojuan214@163.com
Xiaojuan (Jady) Yu is a lecturer of the School of Tourism Management, Sun Yat-Sen University,
China. She has a multi-disciplinary background, with a BA in Economics and a MS in Human
Geography from Peking University, China; and a PhD in Recreation, Sport and Tourism from the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA. Her research interests include tourist
behaviour and co-creation of experience, tourism marketing and management, and cultural
and heritage tourism. She has published several papers in journals, including Tourism
Management, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management and Tourism Analysis.
Email: yuxiaojuan214@163.com
Atila Yüksel is Professor of Marketing at Adnan Menderes University, Turkey. He has published in
numerous journals, is editor of Journal of Travel and Tourism Research and has co-authored four
books. His research interests are tourism planning, destination management, services
marketing, social web and customer relationships. Email: atilayuksel@gmail.com
 Chapter 1

Co-creation of Tourist Experience: Scope,

Definition and Structure

Nina K. Prebensen1, Joseph S. Chen2 and Muzaffer S. Uysal3

1UiT, The Arctic University of Norway, Norway; 2Indiana University at

Bloomington, USA; 3University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA

 CAB International 2018. Creating Experience Value in Tourism, 2nd Edition

(eds Prebensen et al.) 1
2 N.K. Prebensen, J.S. Chen and M.S. Uysal
Tourist Experience
A vacation trip is more often voluntarily and
willingly performed to meet personal and
hedonic needs; not because the tourists have to,
but because they want to. Tourists participate in
producing their vacation, before, during and
after the journey, through their time, effort and
money, because the process of doing so is highly
valued, by themselves and relevant others. This
simple but very important issue in tourist experi-
ence creation denotes a foundational difference
compared with traditional products and services
people buy in order to complete a task or for
other instrumental reasons, i.e. to be trans-
ported, to have their apartment cleaned or to get
medical help to get well from an illness. When
tourists choose to spend money, time and effort
to engage in activities of interest, they do so to
produce an enjoyable moment of time, whatever
their primary aims, motivation, interest, involve-
ment, experiences and skills. Tourists then
search for authentic experiences, to learn from
and to partake (more or less) physically and psy-
chologically in various types of activities. The
traditional hedonic perspective reflecting experi-
ences such as relaxation and indulging within
tourist consumption is therefore accompanied
with knowledge regarding the tourists’ search
for eudaimonic experiences (Ryff, 1989), calling
for new knowledge in terms of how value is
­created in tourism settings.
Experiences and their meanings usually
appeal to tourists’ high-order needs, such as
novelty, excitement and enjoyment, prestige,
socialization and learning, and contribute to the
enhancement of a sense of wellbeing. Ongoing
research in academia and the popular press indi-
cates that today’s travellers are gaining more
power and control over what goes into the
nature of tourism products as experience, with
which travellers also construct their own narra-
tives (Binkhorst and Dekker, 2009). The con-
struction of narratives may be influenced by the
extent to which the interaction takes place
between tourists and the setting (or tangible
place or the experience environment), as well as
the interaction between local inhabitants and
fellow tourists (Prebensen and Foss, 2011). The
nature of this interaction provides the core of
tourist experiences (Walls and Wang, 2011) and
denotes enhanced experience value for the
tourist handling various situations and people
(Prebensen and Foss, 2011).
As implied, the experience environment,
setting or sphere is more than the physical stage.
It includes consumers, producers and the right
to use amenities for a period of time (Bitner,
1992; Walls and Wang, 2011). Binkhorst and
Dekker (2009) refer to this as a tourism experi-
ence network away from the home environment
where the tourist as a participant is surrounded
by a unique experience network of all stake-
holders. This approach places the human being
in the centre and considers tourism as an expe-
rience network in which various stakeholders
co-create in order to engage in tourism experi-
ences. This signifies the importance of the set-
ting in which tourism activities take place to
create value and produce experiences. ­Readiness
of the individual, in terms of physical ability
and capability, competency, willingness to work
with others and the opportunity to participate,
is also a significant variable that may affect the
extent to which a prospective tourist as con-
sumer may take part in creating value in the
setting as much as the setting is conducive
­
to facilitating and creating value (Mathis,
2013).
Tourist Experience and Co-creation
Creating value in tourism experiences is greatly
focused on the role of tourist as consumer and
the destination setting and the service company
as the producer or provider in the co-creation
process. Grönroos (2006, p. 324) stresses that it
is not the tourists who get opportunities to
engage themselves in the service provider’s pro-
cess, but the service provider who can create
opportunities to engage itself with the tourists’
value-generating process. Thus, the elements of
the setting or experience dimensions should
involve the tourist emotionally, physically,
­spiritually and intellectually (Mossberg, 2007).
Another important point that needs to be men-
tioned is about how experiences appeal to
higher-order needs of satisfaction and motiva-
tion. If the setting and producer create an envi-
ronment where the tourist becomes co-producer,
then the perceived value that arises is likely to
improve the quality of the vacation experiences,
 Co-creation of Tourist Experience: Scope, Definition and Structure
thus contributing to tourist wellbeing
(­Prenbensen and Xie, 2017).
Tourists may perceive their vacation experi-
ences differently based on a number of anteced-
ents, as indicated above, and subsequent
variations in their ability and desire to cope and
co-create in the experience moment depending
on situational aspects (Prebensen and Foss,
2011).
When discussing creating or co-creating
value in tourism experiences, one may also like
to see some brief discussion on definitional
issues. We may start by using Frondizi’s (1971)
question: ‘Are things valuable because we value
them, or do we value them because they are
valuable?’ The simple reaction may be that
things are valuable because we value them. This
is because different people value different things.
The idea that value is something that some-
one produces for the consumer to buy and value
afterwards is strongly debated by Vargo and
Lusch (2004, 2006). Vargo and Lusch claim
that ‘The customer is always a co-creator of
value. There is no value until an offering is used
– experience and perception are essential to
value determination’ (2006, p. 44). Value is per-
ceived as ‘value-in-use’, and consumer experi-
ences are fundamental to the co-creation of
value.
This perspective, delineated as the new ser-
vice dominant logic of marketing (Vargo and
Lusch, 2004, 2006, 2008; Grönroos, 2006),
claims the consumer, i.e. the tourist role in creat-
ing experience value, is vital. This logic embraces
the idea that in the process of co-creating value,
the consumers, in addition to firms and organi-
zations, act as resource integrators (Arnould
et al., 2006; Vargo and Lusch, 2006), and that
value is centred in the experiences of consumers
(Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004b). Conse-
quently, the foundational idea in the service-
dominant (S-D) logic is that the service
encounter is an exchange process of value
between the customer and the service provider.
This perspective holds that the consumers and
their skills and knowledge, depicted as operant
resources, add to value creation by integrating
physical, social and cultural resources (Arnould
et al., 2006).
Experience value becomes an integrated
process between host and guests in a certain
atmosphere where their respective meanings of
3
value are shared and recognized. The meanings
of value for different actors have been rooted in
the foundations of economics and the study of
market exchange; in particular, two broad
meanings, ‘value-in-exchange’ and ‘value-in-
use’, which reflect distinct ways of noting value
and value creation. Vargo and Lusch (2004)
describe these as the goods-dominant logic and
service-dominant logic. The goods-dominant
logic is based on the meaning of value-in-
exchange and that value is produced by the firm
in the market, usually by an exchange of goods
and money (Vargo and Lusch, 2004; Vargo et al.,
2010). This perspective holds the roles of ‘pro-
ducers’ and ‘consumers’ as separate and value
creation is frequently thought of as a series of
activities performed by the firm. The alternative
view, S-D logic, relates to meaning of value-in-
use (Vargo and Lusch, 2008). In the S-D logic
the roles of producers and consumers are not
separate, signifying that value is always co-­
created, jointly and reciprocally, in interactions
among providers (including the setting) and
customers or between customers through the
integration of resources and application of
competences.
The discussion points presented implicitly
suggest that things have both exchange value
and value-in-use. This distinction becomes more
obvious in the context of hedonic consumption
such as tourism goods and services. Exchange
values are those values that measure the relative
worth of something when compared with some-
thing else. This to a large extent is determined as
a function of supply and demand forces. For
example, the cost of a trip to London vs Tokyo
from Washington DC is determined by market
factors. Or, a 24-carat gold bracelet is more
expensive than a 14-carat bracelet when using
cost or money to compare the two. The 24-carat
bracelet is going to be significantly more expen-
sive than the 14-carat bracelet simply because
we as consumers believe that the higher the
carat, the higher the cost of it, thus, more valu-
able. Value-in-use is essentially holding the
­sentimental value between the consumer and
the consumed item. Value-in-use is the subjec-
tive and perceived benefit of an item that has
been consumed. In this sense, value-in-use is
created during usage, where value is socially
constructed through experiences (Grönroos and
Voima, 2013). For example, a week-long hike in
4 N.K. Prebensen, J.S. Chen and M.S. Uysal
the Amazon rainforest may be perceived differ-
ently in value by one person compared with
another. If someone has ‘value-in-use’ for an
object, it is a personal feeling or connection with
that item that makes it important.
Vargo and Lusch (2008) eloquently put it
that value creation refers to customers’ creation
of value-in-use; co-creation is a function of
interaction. The degree to which interactions
with spheres take place may also lead to different
forms of value creation and co-creation. Tour-
ism experience must be experienced and the cus-
tomer has to be present. In this regard one can
easily argue that value is subjective and deter-
mined by the consumer. Thus, co-creation is tied
to usage, consumption and value-in-use; value
that occurs at the time of use consumption or
experience (Vargo and Lusch, 2008; Chathoth
et al., 2013).
Whatever name we use – the experience
environment, servicescape, experiencescape,
spheres or setting – on-site value creation pro-
cesses are core foundations that the tourism
industry must acknowledge in order to plan,
develop, involve and accommodate tourists so
that they are able to actively partake in such
practices. The setting is also influenced by con-
text, target, duration and goals of tourists.
­Tourists as consumers bring in various types of
personal resources such as time, money, knowl-
edge, past experience and learned skills. The set-
ting and its characteristics also influence the
interaction between provider sphere and cus-
tomizer. The aesthetic of the setting or ambience
and the functionality of the setting as a facilita-
tor of experience creation are essential for
the tourist to become part of the production
system.
In order to understand value creation,
antecedents of such processes should be recog-
nized; these include the tourist’s motivation,
information provided, knowledge and skills, and
the tourist’s interest and involvement in the
trip to come. Additionally, revealing the conse-
quences and effects of value creation such as
satisfaction, loyalty and subjective wellbeing
should be acknowledged. During the journey
and arriving back home, intentions concerning
re-visitation and recommendation of the jour-
ney and the destination to others may be evoked.
After the trip, the tourists may remember and
tell others about their experiences, which all
comprise value magnitudes for themselves as
well as the service firms and destination visited.
Therefore, understanding the value chain of
tourist travel, before, during and after the trip,
will help tourism businesses become competitive
by enhancing tourist experience value.
The perception and valuation of an experi-
ence is relative (regarding cognitive images) and
dynamic (changing within individuals over
time) (Ulaga, 2003). Co-creation of value for
tourists happens during the process of travelling
in time and space, before, during and after the
journey, and will subsequently affect tourism
firms and destinations in various ways, in addi-
tion to the effects on the tourists’ perception of
experience value. Recent research reveals that a
tourist more actively involved in the creation
and co-creation of an experience evaluates that
experience more positively (Arnould et al., 2002;
Prebensen and Foss, 2011). Studies have shown
that consumers utilize personal resources
actively in co-creating value (Bowen, 1986;
K
­ elley et al., 1990; Rodie and Kleine, 2000;
Johnston and Jones, 2003). Researchers have
suggested classifications of such resources, i.e.
mental, physical and emotional (Rodie and
­Kleine, 2000), might vary in terms of the level
of consumer involvement and role performance
(Bitner et al., 1997). The consumer literature
has also put forward the importance of previous
experience and knowledge in order to create
value in various consumption situations and
environments (McGrath and Otnes, 1995;
­Harris and Baron, 2004).
Despite an increased focus on value cre-
ation and co-creation in marketing literature
(e.g. Holbrook, 1999, 2006; Prahalad and
Ramaswamy, 2004a, 2004b; Vargo and Lusch,
2004) and in tourism research (Arnould et al.,
2002; Prebensen and Foss, 2011), there is a lack
in understanding of the tourist as a resource
provider and integrator, as mediator and mod-
erator, in value co-creation processes.
Even though the subject of customer value
has been addressed by a number of researchers
(e.g. Holbrook, 1996; Woodruff, 1997; Sweeney
and Soutar, 2001; Williams and Soutar, 2009),
and further in the context of S-D logic (e.g.
­Berthon and Joby, 2006; Holbrook, 2006), the
discussions on how and why tourists engage in
co-creation are rather limited. Consequently,
this book aims to explore and outline the
 Co-creation of Tourist Experience: Scope, Definition and Structure
concept of tourist experience value, and subse-
quently divulge important antecedents and con-
sequences of the experience value construct.
Specifically, the book strives to complement cur-
rent theories regarding value co-creation in
tourist experiences.
Phases of Tourist Experience
Creation
It has been well documented that travellers usu-
ally go through different phases of a travel jour-
ney. Clawson and Knetsch (1971) provided five
phases of a travel experience: pre-trip (planning
and information gathering), travel to site, on-site
activities, return trip and post-trip. Regardless of
the number of phases, whether three (travel to
site, onsite experience and return) or five, as put
forward by Clawson and Knetsch (1971), the
interaction between the tourist and the service
provider (the industry) may occur with each
phase of travel at the boundary of the tourist
and provider spheres. Pre-trip activities may use
personal resources to influence and create plan-
ning and finding motivation for the trip, and
tourists use some form of transportation en
route to the selected travel destination. Often
tourists turn to travel and tourism service pro-
viders (e.g. airlines, bus companies) to help them
reach their destination. Subsequently, when
tourists reach their destinations they often rely
on travel/tourism service providers to supply the
accommodations, restaurants, entertainment
and encounters of the traveller at the final desti-
nation. Then, tourists make their return trip,
during which they may interact with travel car-
riers and personnel. After the travel experience
is over and the travellers have returned to their
homes, they often reflect on their trip experi-
ences (Neal et al., 1999). So, tourism consump-
tion inherently possesses the unique capacity to
create value as the tourists interact with each
phase of the journey as the setting throughout
the duration of the entire trip.
The different phases of a travel experience
also imply that it is not only possible but also fea-
sible to create value-added dimensions at any
point of the process. It is important for providers
and producers to know that the phases of the
process can act both as sources of experience
5
enhancement, satisfaction and dissonance. The
simultaneous production and consumption of
most of the tourism services adds a unique chal-
lenge to the creation of customer value. Creation
of customer values in tourism can occur
throughout the different phases of travel experi-
ence, ranging from the pre-trip planning and
anticipation, to on-site experience, to post-trip
reflection. The possible sources of value creation
and co-creation may be context-based (e.g.,
­Bohlin & Brandt, 2014; Genc, 2017; Komppula
& Konu, 2017), target-oriented and/or goal-­
oriented (Campos et al., 2017). For example,
Braithwaite (1992) discusses the importance of
value creation in relation to information tech-
nology. He presents a framework called ‘value
chain’ that stretches across the different subsec-
tors of the travel and tourism industry. Each link
on the value chain represents an experience
point. The value each experience or travel phase
creates may range from ‘high’ to ‘moderate’ to
‘low’. Each point has the potential to produce
value for the customer. However, this potential
to create value may be influenced by the nature
of the setting and its characteristics. Each offer-
ing of service-oriented technology may affect
the value that a customer receives at one or
more experience points.
The question is then, how do destinations
and firms as providers and co-creators influence
perceived value of the phases or processes of
vacation experiences as the tourist moves into
actual consumption of the offering? Marketing
and research efforts of producers in different
organizations, including partnerships between
the public and private sectors, should be geared
toward the creation of value to potential visitors
at any point in the phases of vacation experi-
ence. Today, the use of information technology
is one of the means available to make value
creation easier, linking tourism product and
­
consumer in real time and as a consequence lim-
iting time devoted to planning and logistics and
creating more time for relaxation and leisure.
Much of the cognitive and physical effort
of the purchase occurs prior to actual buying
behaviour. Therefore, the tourism industry
should know how to constructively influence,
motivate and involve customers in the pre-­
purchase and on-site stages, all found to involve
tourists’ perceived value of the experience
(­Prebensen et al., 2013). Perceived customer
6 N.K. Prebensen, J.S. Chen and M.S. Uysal
value has been found to be a powerful predictor
of purchase intention (e.g., Zeithaml, 1988).
Thus, identifying factors that are critical in
acquiring new visitors and retaining old cus-
tomers should be of great interest to marketers
of tourist experiences and destinations.
Tourists interact with people and natural or
man-made elements. Interaction traditionally
has been seen as a core characteristic of tourism
as a result of simultaneous production and con-
sumption, delineated as ‘prosumption’ by Toffler
(1980). This is especially the case in experience
production and consumption such as in tourist
experiences.
Goffman (1967) focused on the intangible
elements of experiences and the importance of
the interactions between hosts and guests. The
production, delivery and consumption of experi-
ences are inextricably linked with the interper-
sonal interaction between service providers and
consumers (e.g. Buonincontri et al., 2017; Chen
et al., 2016; Lin et al., 2017). The tourist inter-
acts with a host often represented by the service
worker, in addition to other guests and physical
elements within a firm or as part of a destina-
tion. These interactions happen because it is
­valued or expected to provide future value (or
hinder events diminishing value) for the cus-
tomer. All actors included in the service encoun-
ter, i.e. the participants in value creation, refer to
all individuals, whether customers or workers
are involved (Booms and Bitner, 1981). Research
has repeatedly demonstrated that such an inter-
action is among the most significant determi-
nants of consumer satisfaction with ­ services
(e.g. Bitner et al., 1997).
The impact of the physical surrounding of
servicescapes for customers and employees,
along with the service provided, involves people
differently in terms of how they create and co-
create their own and others’ tourist experiences.
Knowledge regarding the effect of the physical
surroundings and the servicescapes is extremely
important for the tourism industry in order
to develop innovative and valued service
experiences.
This knowledge will help tourist providers
focus on the drivers of overall value for the tour-
ist, and thus help firms enhance their overall
value as well (Smith and Colgate, 2007). Both
value for the customer and value for the firm
includes the customer’s perception of value.
That being so, exploring the tourist value con-
struct in an interaction framework would help
tourist businesses identify how to tailor their
businesses toward their customers and hence
increase loyalty among their patrons.
Research demonstrates the advantage of
acknowledging consumer behaviour through
the perceived value construct (e.g. Woodruff
and Gardial, 1996; Heskett et al., 1997; ­Sweeney
and Soutar, 2001). Customers’ perceived value
is defined as the results or ­benefits customers
receive in relation to the total costs (e.g. Zeithaml,
1988; Holbrook, 1994, 1996; Woodruff, 1997).
These authors, however, view value creation as
something the service provider should deliver
through acknowledging the consumer’s needs
and wants. Consequently, dimensions of value
creation as part of an interaction process are
lacking. Experience consumption (e.g. Arnould
and Thompson, 2005) such as a tourist
­experience, deals with emotions and contextual,
symbolic and non-utilitarian aspects of con-
sumption. Value, then, is considered to reside in
the experience and not in the object of consump-
tion. A tourist visits destinations in order to
enjoy valuable experiences, which signifies that
partaking in the process or the journey is valu-
able in itself. That being so, a tourist spends
money, time and effort to enjoy a journey, essen-
tially to partake in co-creating preferred experi-
ences, whatever the primary motivations may be
(e.g. learning, socializing or indulging).
Structure of the Book
Over the past 25 years the field of tourism has
witnessed a tremendous growth in the number
of academic journals and books on the topic,
and in the amount of information that has been
generated on different aspects of tourist behav-
iour. As the field of tourism begins to display
maturity and scientific sophistication, it is
important that we as tourism researchers fully
understand the breadth and depth of vacation
experience value and how this experience is co-
created as tourists engage in and go through dif-
ferent phases of a vacation experience. There
have been a number of books in the scholarly
literature on tourism and allied fields that have
exclusively focused on tourist experiences or
 Co-creation of Tourist Experience: Scope, Definition and Structure 7

some aspects of experiences (e.g., Pearce, 2012;
Morgan et al., 2010; Jennings and Nickerson,
2005; Ryan, 1997, 2002; Wearing, 2002; Pine
and Gilmore, 1999). However, the first edition of
this book (Prebensen et al., 2014) along with
another two books (Filep & Pearce, 2013;
P
­ rebensen et al., 2017) focus exclusively on cre-
ating value and co-creation in tourism experi-
ences in the field of tourism and allied fields.
This book aims to serve as a reference from
the unique perspective of co-creation of experi-
ence value and vacation experience in the field
of tourism and allied fields such as leisure, recre-
ation and service management. The book has
brought together scholars from diverse areas to
address the nature and types of tourist value
and what factors affect value creation and co-
creation in tourist experiences in particular from
both the customers’ participation and involve-
ment point of view, and the business perspective
of value creation. In other words, how does the
tourist create and co-create experience value for
him or herself, other tourists and the tourism
firm by being more or less active throughout the
duration of the consumption process? What is
the role of the producer in the process of value-
in-use consumption of tourism goods and ser-
vices? Particularly, we attempted to structure
the book in a way that provides a framework to
distinguish key resources or antecedents of cus-
tomer value that appear to validate consider-
ation in the analysis of consumer behaviour.
These antecedents of value co-creation refer to
different aspects of consumption that have
attracted the attention of various scholars in the
field. Consequently, our contributors, who repre-
sent eleven countries in these areas of inquiry,
discuss whether and how their concerns fit
into the thematic framework, offering further
insights into the applicability of the antecedents
of customer value co-creation, consumption
process and interaction in the experience envi-
ronment across a broad range of research top-
ics. By doing so, we believe that this book, with
twenty unique chapters, fills a gap that exists in
our current tourism literature.
We think that this book will be of great
interest to students of tourism and allied fields
such as leisure, recreation and hospitality. In
addition, tourism practitioners and researchers
may find this book very useful in understanding
how to best cater to, attract and increase tourists
since it focuses on the merits and importance of
co-creation value in tourist experiences and
their associated management and marketing
implications.
Acknowledgements
The book is part of a research program ‘Service
Innovation and Tourist Experiences in the High
North: The Co-Creation of Values for Consum-
ers, Firms and the Tourism Industry’, financed
by the Norwegian Research Association, project
no. 195306.
As a starting point the authors of the book
gathered at a book seminar in Tromsø and at
Sommerøy in Norway, discussing the idea, focus
and each chapter in order to create a valuable
book on value creation in tourism.
The editors send warm thoughts and
thanks to all contributors of the book, and for
their effort and skills in writing valuable chap-
ters. Warm thanks also go to the publisher CABI
and their highly skilled staff.

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of evidence. Journal of Marketing 52, 2–22.
 Chapter 2

Dynamic Drivers of Tourist Experiences

Joseph S. Chen1, Nina K. Prebensen2 and Muzaffer S. Uysal3

1Indiana University at Bloomington, USA; 2UiT, The Arctic University of

Norway, Norway; 3University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA

 CAB International 2018. Creating Experience Value in Tourism, 2nd Edition

(eds Prebensen et al.) 11
12 J.S. Chen, N.K. Prebensen and M.S. Uysal
Introduction
In the face of a highly competitive market envi-
ronment, tourism operators seek winning strat-
egies capable of perpetuating their market share.
The quality of service experience delivered to
tourists has been considered as one of the high-
lights in market strategy development (Gunter,
1987; Taniguchi et al., 2005; Obenour et al.,
2006; Larsen, 2007; Mossberg, 2007; Volo,
2010). Nevertheless, producing a satisfactory
tourist experience seems to be a daunting task
because tourist experiences can be rather sub-
jective from person to person (Jackson and
Marsh, 1996), complex due to the level of
involvement (Fave and Massimini, 2003) and
multifaceted in relation to the benefits sought
(Prentice et al., 1998). Consequently, how to fab-
ricate and stage fulfilling trip experiences to cre-
ate value for both tourists and service providers
has become a prominent investigative theme
(Uriely, 2005).
In an early stage of tourism research, sev-
eral polemic tenets manifesting the phenome-
non of tourism were proposed by sociologists
(e.g. Boorstin, 1964; MacCannell, 1976; Cohen,
1979), who meanwhile attempted to delineate
what constitutes tourist experiences. After-
wards, scholarly discussions on tourist experi-
ences have largely touched on deterministic
notions (e.g. Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier, 2009)
that probe the relationship between certain
behavioural elements, such as motivation
(Gomez-Jacinto et al., 1999; Dann and Jacobsen,
2003), and tourist experiences, embracing
deductive and inductive ways of inquiry. Unar-
guably, understanding the causality relevant to
the formation of tourist experiences could pro-
vide valuable insights in product development
and service delivery. Although a variety of dis-
courses of tourist experiences have been noted
in the last three decades, a comprehensive model
capturing the antecedents of these experiences
while highlighting the nature of the experiences
achieved has not been seen in research.
This chapter attempts to compose a concep-
tual framework that demonstrates the drivers
influencing the creation of tourist experiences.
In constructing this tourist experience model,
three streams are offered. The first stream is to
trace the past research of consumption experi-
ence in general and the tourist experience
specifically while reviewing the concepts of the
tourist experience, the determinants of the expe-
rience and the strategic frameworks utilizing the
tourist experience as a facilitator in marketing
management. The second attempts to explicate
the relationships between the drivers and the for-
mation of tourist experiences from a temporal
consideration (e.g. before the trip, during the trip
and after the trip). The last consideration intends
to illustrate underlying challenges in incorporat-
ing the proposed model into business practices so
as to infer possible directions for future research.
In contemporary management literature
(Halbrook and Hirschmann, 1982), the focus of
investigation effort has shifted from the con-
sumption of goods to the consumption of experi-
ences (e.g. Otto and Richie, 1995; Morgan,
2006), knowledge and services. In response to
the emergence of experience-centric practices,
Pine and Gilmore (1999) noted the phenome-
non of the experience economy that means that
the provision of quality consumption experi-
ences is now a pivotal mission in businesses.
Indeed, the travel industry is among one of the
largest service sectors in terms of the number of
people employed and its contribution to the
economy. Tourist experiences therefore necessi-
tate critical debates and empirical undertakings
among social-sciences scholars and social
critics.
Boorstin (1964), for instance, denoted
tourist experiences as contrived incidents owing
to what is characterized as the trivial, superficial
and frivolous nature of tourist pursuits, which
in theory yield a pseudo-event. However,
MacCannell’s (1976) observation of tourist
­
engagement contradicted Boorstin’s theory and
postulated tourist motives as a search for
authenticity. However, Cohen (1979) ques-
tioned the validity of the two aforementioned
schools of thought concerning tourist experi-
ences in light of the narrowly selected study
samples. He praised the contributions from
Boorstin and MacCannell, stating ‘each has con-
tributed valuable insights into the motives,
behaviors and experience of some tourists’
(1979, p. 180), but that ‘Different kinds of peo-
ple may desire different modes of touristic expe-
riences; hence, “the tourist” does not exist as a
type’ (1979, p. 180).
Moreover, in his bid to reconcile Boorstin
and MacCannell’s incompatible views of tourist
 Dynamic Drivers of Tourist Experiences
experiences, Cohen (1979) derived a continuum
of five modes of tourist experience (recreational,
diversionary, experiential, experimental and
existential), depending on the depth of seeking
and escaping motives. Cohen implied that taking
a leisure trip is a way of managing tension cre-
ated by one’s effort to conform to the social val-
ues of his/her society. Nevertheless, the
magnitude of pressure created varies among the
different groups of tourists. For example, those
drawing on the recreational-mode experience
are considered as the group of tourists who
alienate themselves from their life space the least.
On the other extreme of the experience contin-
uum, tourists who aspire to existential experi-
ences detach culturally and spiritually from their
own society the most. Indeed, it is arguable that
Cohen’s phenomenological analysis erects a
tourist experience theory from a holistic perspec-
tive, while laying a theoretical abstract influenc-
ing the development of market strategy.
Beyond the above ethnological contentions,
researchers are overwhelmingly in accord with
the proposition that tourist experiences are mul-
tidimensional, depending on the benefits sought
(Prentice et al., 1998). The nature of tourist
experiences is indeed deemed to be dynamic.
­Selstad viewed human behaviour as accommo-
dative and argued that ‘experiences anticipated
by tourists do not always materialize, and unex-
pected events are integrated as a part of experi-
ence’ (2007, p. 30). Further, it is likely that the
desired experience may be shifted as the circum-
stances dictate. For example, in a given journey,
tourists who are originally in search of existen-
tial experiences may switch their attention to
recreational experiences when they no longer
feel existential experiences can be fulfilled. The
adaptive temptation is oriented by personal
value and in conformity with personal goals.
This may be best elucidated by the observation
of Crick-Furman and Prentice, who drew their
attention to tourism value in stating ‘values do
not remain constant but rather are adapted to
different environments and contexts according
to the immediate goals and objectives of the indi-
vidual’ (2000, p. 88). In other words, the motive
to pursue a particular type of experience could
be rather unstable and modified unexpectedly in
certain situations.
Moreover, tourist experiences are generally
derived either passively or proactively. This
13
tendency to pursue desired experiences may be
best described by Dilthey’s concept of ‘mere’
experience and ‘an’ experience (Rickman,
1976). Turner and Bruner (1986) further enun-
ciated the concept that mere experience is a
reflection of the outcome from passive encoun-
tering, whereas an experience springs from an
array of engagements which are undertaken in
a constructive, goal-oriented fashion.
Empirical Undertakings Grounded
on Experience Theories
When it comes to the conceptualization of expe-
rience stages, Csíkszentmihályi’s (1975) flow
theory, which relates to the feeling of spontane-
ous enjoyment in engagement of an activity, is
considered as one of the most provocative and
influential experience theories in psychology.
Several tourism scholars (e.g. Vitterso et al.,
2000) have utilized this concept as the theoreti-
cal foundation in empirical investigations to
evaluate tourist optimal experiences.
In the domain of service management, the
study of consumption experience has been prev-
alent. The thesis of Pine and Gilmore (1999) has
also offered innovative directions for scholarly
research on consumption experience. They
described an emerging force called ‘the experi-
ence economy’, which will become the next
economy following the service economy. Fur-
ther, they emphasized that providers ought to
orchestrate memorable experiences for their
consumers. They divided consumption experi-
ences into four functional zones: recreational,
escapist, aesthetic and educational. Despite
management thought frequently noted by tour-
ism and hospitality scholars, no evidence-based
investigation was presented until the work by Oh
et al. (2007), who, mirroring the four domains
of experience economy, constructed and vali-
dated a multi-trait and multi-dimensional tour-
ism experience scale.
Another school of thought concerning
consumption experience was presented by
Schmitt (1999), who distinguished experiences
using five dimensions or strategic experiential
modules: sensory experience (sensing), emo-
tional experience (feeling), thinking experience
(thought), operational experience (action) and
14 J.S. Chen, N.K. Prebensen and M.S. Uysal
related experiences (belonging). Sensory experi-
ence is also tied to a person’s intuition, and emo-
tional and thinking experiences are the reflection
of affective and cognitive quests. Operational
experience springs from engagement in activity,
while related experience is considered as per-
sonal attachment (belongingness) to certain
social groups or cultures. Most recently, in their
application to the five strategic experiential mod-
ules, Wang et al. (2012) evaluated the causal
relationships among service quality, tourist
experience and revisit intention concerning
three popular wetland parks in Zhejiang, China.
In their final analysis, however, they postulated
that only sensory, emotional and operational
experience could statistically describe the tourist
experience of wetland parks under investigation.
This may imply that experience dimensions may
not all be necessarily valid and applicable.
Factors Influencing the Creation
of Tourist Experiences
In conclusion, this chapter has traced the
dynamic and evolutional nature of the tourist
experience and postulates the tourist experience
as an amalgam of cognitive and affective marks,
caused by the bricolage of encounters occurring
before, during and after the trip, reflecting in a
passive or active state of mind.
In theory, tourist behaviour in relation to
experience creation could be modified by a host
Table 2.1. Tourist experience driver model.
Trip partaking experiences
Before the trip During the trip
Personal driver
e.g. Age (Evolving influences)
e.g. Motivation e.g. Modified involvement
e.g. Modified motivation
Environmental driver
e.g. Advertising e.g. Modified perception
Interactive driver
e.g. Information search e.g. Modified information search
(Emerging influences)
e.g. Encountering with travel partners
e.g. Encountering with other guests
e.g. Encountering with the service environment
of factors, which include but are not limited to:
behavioural variances (e.g. expectation, percep-
tion and motivation), social-demographic traits
(e.g. education, income), lifestyle (e.g. basic liv-
ing, moderate living and extravagant living) and
externalities (e.g. weather, regulations and the
environment). This chapter does not discuss all
possible antecedences influencing the creation
of the tourist experience. Rather, it is an attempt
to furnish a new perspective for examining the
dynamic process of the creation of tourist expe-
riences that may engender possible directions for
further studies.
Consequently, the following section pres-
ents a conceptual framework called the Tourist
Experience Driver Model (TEDM) that illustrates
the formation of the tourist experience and the
drivers facilitating the creation of the experi-
ence. The TEDM (see Table 2.1) presents two
types of trip-related experience, differentiated by
the time span of the trip. The experience received
before and during the trip is labelled as the trip
partaking experience. Once the trip is complete,
the trip partaking experience becomes the trip
reminiscing experience, which is in fact the rec-
ollection of various pieces of partaking experi-
ences. In brief, as described above, the partaking
experiences relate to different pieces of trip
engagement (e.g. asking for one’s recommenda-
tion for hotel booking and participating in a
whale-watching activity), whereas the reminisc-
ing experiences reflect one’s recalling all partak-
ing experiences at a certain point in time. It is
suggested that trip reminiscing experiences may
Trip reminiscing experiences
After the trip
Non-recallable
Recallable
I. Disastrous
II. Regretful
III. Monotonous
IV. Memorable
V. Extraordinary
 Dynamic Drivers of Tourist Experiences
vary at different timeframes (e.g. one week after
the trip vs one year after the trip) due to memory
loss.
The trip partaking experience starts as
early as the tourist shows a desire to take a trip.
This arousing ‘anxiety’ motivates individuals to
take further trip-related actions, such as making
inquiries about the destinations of interest so as,
at a certain point of time, to make trip decisions
that involve diverse decision tasks (e.g. destina-
tion selection, airline booking and hotel reserva-
tion). The pre-trip engagements could produce a
variety of memories in either a positive or nega-
tive fashion. It is suggested that positive memo-
ries yielded before the trip may help boost the
tourist’s other partaking experiences and vice
versa. For example, individuals may be impressed
by a friendly and quality-service attitude of a
hotel reservation agent when making a room
reservation before taking the trip. Afterwards,
when staying in the hotel, the individuals may
find that the hotel meets their original expecta-
tions. In such a situation, the two positive expe-
riences toward service delivery occurring before
and during the trip are likely to make the indi-
viduals believe that the hotel’s service quality is
consistently good. As a result, the individuals
tend to possess a stronger belief toward the ser-
vice quality of the hotel they visited. In the end,
this helps secure a high level of customer satis-
faction and increases the likelihood of achieving
customer loyalty.
This chapter posits that three types of driv-
ers collectively affect trip partaking experiences.
The first is a personal driver that relates to an
individual’s characteristics. It is argued that the
personal driver is comparatively profound. It is
the most diverse and comprehensive driver
whose profile consists of attributes ranging from
socio-demographic traits to psychological ele-
ments such as personality. In a case of socio-
demographic characteristics, some could be
used as predictors and some could not. For
example, elderly tourists prefer to read larger
font-size printed documents; individuals travel-
ling with small children may be happier if baby-
sitting services or children’s activities are
provided at destinations. Retrospectively, indi-
viduals in an upper-income level may not neces-
sarily want to stay at upscale hotels when taking
a leisure trip. As for psychological traits, these
could offer some valuable tips in predicting
15
behavioural intention. One example is that peo-
ple with a strong pro-environment attitude are
likely to stay at a hotel implementing environ-
mental management schemes, regardless of
other service offerings.
The second is an environmental driver that
deals with non-personal influences. For instance,
appealing, informative promotion materials of
the destination may give rise to an induced
image, which could entice the trip demand from
the tourist. It is true that the outcomes of mar-
keting efforts by industry professionals could be
foreseen at a certain point of time in regard to
their effect on the tourist’s decision making.
Nevertheless, under some circumstances the
environmental driver could rapidly emerge as a
powerful stimulus on an individual’s state of
mind in either a positive or negative way. For
example, when reading about news concerning
an avalanche incident in the Alps, people who
are scheduled to visit a winter resort surround-
ing the Sierra Nevada Mountains may have
some concerns and apprehension for their win-
ter trip. In a different vein, people’s level of anxi-
ety toward the trip will increase when they find
out that they will have an opportunity to win an
award of $10,000 as hotel guests. Therefore, the
environmental driver is an essential property,
manipulating individual’s perception as well as
staging the partaking experience.
Finally, the interactive driver brings the des-
tination to the tourists’ attention through inter-
active and reciprocal channels of exchange. For
example, during the information-search stage,
tourists may consult with their friends or talk to
service providers to obtain useful insights on the
destination. At this trip stage, the interaction
with people is of limited scope since it merely ful-
fils the cognitive gap of travel-related informa-
tion. Through those interactions, tourists may,
on the one hand, find their information needs
fulfilled, yet on the other hand, become aware
of new activities, amenities and attractions to
explore. This newly acquired knowledge allows
the tourists to instigate actions on new tourism
services. The interactive driver therefore plays a
viable role in assisting tourists to escalate their
level of excitement and accordingly may result
in a fulfilling trip experience.
The above three drivers may be further
modified to reflect the different magnitude of
effects on the partaking experience. For
16 J.S. Chen, N.K. Prebensen and M.S. Uysal
example, tourists who show no or low interest in
reading the background literature on the points
of interest and associated tourist activities ren-
dered by the destination before taking their trip
may be prompted to attain new knowledge when
they find something interesting, or when they
interact with other tourists and service staff at
the destination. Transition from this passive
state of mind in acquiring trip information to the
proactive attitude toward information search
shows that the driver may be rapidly amplified in
a different time span of the trip.
Nevertheless, when individuals are starting
their trip, new attributes reinforcing the tourist
experience may surface that are also considered
as interactive drivers. For example, during the
trip, generally the tourists will have many
chances to interact with various kinds of people
(e.g. tourists, service staff and locals) while expe-
riencing the social, cultural, spiritual and aes-
thetic attributes along with the functional value
of the service environment (e.g. the scenery,
artefacts and architecture). Those interactions
constitute some pieces of the puzzle in a tourist’s
memory map of their trip experience.
In mass tourism settings, opportunities to
mingle with tourists, service staff and local peo-
ple are abundantly supplied. Because socializa-
tion is one of the motivations of travel, it is
expected that a certain degree of interaction
with people other than travel partners will take
place in a visitor centre or on a tour bus. In some
situations, people may prefer to travel alone and
express no desire to interact with anyone unnec-
essarily. Assuming that such people have little or
no interaction with anyone during the trip, their
trip experience could be altered by their percep-
tion of the environment as well as perceived
­tangible and intangible traits, such as a singular
architecture style and the atmosphere of a desti-
nation. While taking the trip, people are able to
expand their scope of interaction with others by
including more service staff, other tourists and
local people at destinations. In conclusion, indi-
viduals determine what people will be encoun-
tered and are largely in control of the interactive
driver, contrary to the environmental driver,
wherein the individuals have less or no power to
avoid experiences such as an avalanche.
Above all, it is argued that the three types
of drivers are linked and could thus affect
each other. For example, a socialization motive
(a personal driver) may push the tourists to initi-
ate an interaction (an interactive driver) with
local people; meanwhile, through conversation
(an interactive driver) with other tourists at the
destination the tourist may increase his/her
involvement (a personal driver) in activity
participation.
In summary, the trip partaking experience
entails a host of different kinds of experiences
evoked before and during the trip. Some experi-
ences could be joyful, some could be regretful
and some could be relatively monotonous or
uneventful. To thoroughly recall those experi-
ences seems to be a challenge for most individu-
als. It is likely that people may remember some
parts of the partaking experience and com-
pletely forget something they have done on the
trip. Hence, some partaking experiences are
regarded as recallable and some as non-recall-
able. Above all, the quality of the past trip
­experience is judged by the two psychological
consequences: recallable and non-recallable
experiences. It is still unclear to what extent
­individuals can recall their trip engagement. In
some situations, the majority of experiences are
recallable and vice versa. Unquestionably, the
likelihood of losing memories of a trip become
higher as time progresses. Moreover, it is impor-
tant to recognize that while the personal evalua-
tion of partaking experiences may be unstable
from time to time owing to the loss of trip memo-
ries, enhanced photographic possibilities and
social media sharing of these experiences may
give memories a longer existence, especially
where reviewing travel images and experiences
with friends and family is a well established
tradition.
It is common to see that individuals’ evalu-
ations of trip engagements differ from one trip to
another. This can be because of many reasons,
including service quality variation among the
providers and consumers’ expectations of ser-
vice quality, which may change. Practitioners
generally use customer satisfaction as a perfor-
mance evaluation tool to understand the con-
sumer’s perception of service quality. To further
operationalize post-trip evaluation by tourists,
this chapter takes a similar concept, however
with different descriptors, to present the tourist’s
assessment of the trip experience. It proposes
five types of experience that can be illuminated
by an experience spectrum encompassing the
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without uttering a word. He cut off a piece of calico and handed it to
her as her recompense. She received it in perfect silence, walked
into the yard, and folded it carefully on the ground. Meanwhile a fire
had been kindled of pine splints and branches, which was now
blazing high. Without any hesitation the Sukia walked up to it and
stepped in its very centre. The flames darted their forked tongues as
high as her waist; the coals beneath and around her naked feet
blackened, and seemed to expire; while the tourno which she wore
about her loins cracked and shivered with the heat. There she stood,
immovable and apparently as insensible as a statue of iron, until the
blaze subsided, when she commenced to walk around the
smouldering embers, muttering rapidly to herself in an unintelligible
manner. Suddenly she stopped, and placing her foot on the bamboo
staff, broke it in the middle, shaking out, from the section in her
hand, a full-grown tamagesa snake, which on the instant coiled itself
up, flattened its head, and darted out its tongue, in an attitude of
defiance and attack. The Sukia extended her hand, and it fastened
on her wrist with the quickness of light, where it hung dangling and
writhing its body in knots and coils, while she resumed her mumbling
march around the embers. After awhile, and with the same
abruptness which had marked all her previous movements, she
shook off the serpent, crushed its head in the ground with her heel,
and taking up the cloth which had been given to her, stalked away,
without having exchanged a word with any one present.”
Perhaps the secret of it lies in the non-existence of the sting,
which may be extracted, as is frequently done by the Arab serpent-
charmer. Anyhow, such powers are greatly dreaded by the simple
and superstitious savage, who regard the Sukia as a supernatural
person.
The Tinguians of the Phillipine Islands are in an almost equally
benighted condition. They have no veneration for the stars; they
neither adore the sun, nor moon, nor the constellations; they believe
in the existence of a soul, and pretend that after death it quits the
body, and remains in the family of the defunct.
As to the god that they adore, it varies and changes form
according to chance and circumstances. And here is the reason:
“When a Tinguian chief has found in the country a rock, or a trunk of
a tree, of a strange shape—I mean to say, representing tolerably well
either a dog, cow, or buffalo—he informs the inhabitants of the
village of his discovery, and the rock, or trunk of a tree, is
immediately considered as a divinity—that is to say, as something
superior to man. Then all the Indians repair to the appointed spot,
carrying with them provisions and live hogs. When they have
reached their destination they raise a straw roof above the new idol,
to cover it, and make a sacrifice by roasting hogs; then, at the sound
of instruments, they eat, drink, and dance until they have no
provisions left. When all is eaten and drank, they set fire to the
thatched roof, and the idol is forgotten, until the chief, having
discovered another one, commands a new ceremony.”
It has been already noticed in these pages, that the Malagaseys
are utterly without religion. Their future state is a matter that never
troubles them; indeed, they have no thought or hope beyond the
grave, and are content to rely on that absurd thing “sikidy” for
happiness on this side of it. Thanks, however, to Mr. Robert Drury
(whom the reader will recollect as the player of a neat trick on a
certain Malagasey Umossee), we are informed that a century or so
back there prevailed in this gloomy region a sort of religious rite
known as the “Ceremony of the Bull,” and which was performed as
follows:
The infant son of a great man called Dean Mevarrow was to be
presented to the “lords of the four quarters of the earth,” and like
many other savage rite began and ended with an enormous
consumption of intoxicating liquor. In this case the prime beverage is
called toak, and, according to Mr. Drury, “these people are great
admirers of toak, and some of the vulgar sort are as errant as sots
and as lazy as any in England; for they will sell their Guinea corn,
carravances—nay, their very spades and shovels—and live upon
what the woods afford them. Their very lamber (a sort of petticoat)
must go for toak, and they will go about with any makeshift to cover
their nakedness.”
Now for the ceremony. “The toak was made for some weeks
beforehand by boiling the honey and combs together as we in
England make mead. They filled a great number of tubs, some as
large as a butt and some smaller; a shed being built for that purpose,
which was thatched over, to place them in. On the day appointed,
messengers were despatched all round the country to invite the
relations and friends. Several days before the actual celebration of
the ceremony there were visible signs of its approach. People went
about blowing of horns and beating of drums, both night and day, to
whom some toak was given out of the lesser vessels as a small
compensation for their trouble. They who came from a long distance
took care to arrive a day or two before, and were fed and entertained
with toak to their heart’s content. On the evening preceding the feast
I went into the town and found it full of people, some wallowing on
the ground, and some staggering; scarcely one individual sober,
either man, woman, or child. And here one might sensibly discern
the sense of peace and security, the people abandoning themselves
without fear or reserve to drinking and all manner of diversions. My
wife” (Mr. Drury got so far reconciled to his state as to marry a fellow
slave) “I found had been among them indeed, but had the prudence
to withdraw in time, for she was fast asleep when I returned home.
“On the morning of the ceremony I was ordered to fetch in two
oxen and a bull that had been set aside for the feast, to tie their legs,
and to throw them along upon the ground. A great crowd had by this
time collected around the spot where the child was, decked with
beads, and a skin of white cotton thread wound about his head. The
richest of the company brought presents for the child—beads,
hatchets, iron shovels, and the like, which, although of no immediate
value to him, would doubtless be saved from rusting by his parents.
Every one was served once with toak, and then the ceremony
began.
“For some time the umossee had been, to all appearance,
measuring his shadow on the ground, and presently finding its length
to his mind, he gave the word. Instantly one of the child’s relatives
caught him up and ran with him to the prostrate bull, and putting the
child’s right hand on the bull’s right horn, repeated a form of words of
which the following is as nigh a translation as I can render: ‘Let the
great God above, the lords of the four quarters of the world, and the
demons, prosper this child and make him a great man. May he prove
as strong as this bull and overcome all his enemies.’ If the bull roars
while the boy’s hand is on his horn they look upon it as an ill omen
portending either sickness or some other misfortune in life. All the
business of the umossee is nothing more than that above related; for
as to the religious part of the ceremony he is in nowise concerned in
it, if there be any religion intended by it, which is somewhat to be
questioned.

Ceremony of Touching the Bull.

 “The ceremony being over the child is delivered to its mother, who
all this time is sitting on a mat, with the women round her; and now
the merriment began: the thatch was all pulled off the toak house,
and I was ordered to kill the bull and the oxen; but these not being
sufficient my master sent for three more which had been brought by
his friends, for there was abundance of mouths to feed. Before they
began to drink he took particular care to secure all their weapons,
and no man was permitted to have so much as a gun or a lance; and
then they indulged themselves in boiling, broiling and roasting of
meat, drinking of toak, singing, hollowing, blowing of shells, and
drumming with all their might and main; and so the revel continued
through that night and the next day.”
It is very curious, and were it not so serious a matter, could
scarcely fail to excite the risible faculties of the reader, to read the
outrageous notions entertained by African savages concerning
religion generally. Take the case of King Peppel, a potentate of
“Western Africa, and the descendant of a very long line of kings of
that name (originally “Pepper” or “Pepperal,” and so named on
account of the country’s chief trade being, in ancient times, nearly
limited to pepper). Thanks to the missionaries, King Peppel had
been converted from his heathen ways and brought to profess
Christianity. As to the quality of the monarch’s religious convictions,
the following conversation between him and a well-known Christian
traveller may throw a light:
“What have you been doing, King Peppel?”
“All the same as you do—I tank God.”
“For what?”
“Every good ting God sends me.”
“Have you seen God?”
“Chi! No; suppose man see God he must die one minute” (He
would die in a moment).
“When you die won’t you see God?”
 With great warmth, “I know no savvy (I don’t know). How should I
know? Never mind, I no want to hear more for that palaver” (I want
no more talk on that subject).
“What way?” (Why?)
“It no be your business; you come here for trade palaver.”
I knew, says the missionary in question, it would be of no use
pursuing the subject at that time, so I was silent, and it dropped for
the moment.
In speaking of him dying I had touched a very tender and
disagreeable chord, for he looked very savage and sulky, and I saw
by the rapid changes in his countenance that he was the subject of
some internal emotion. At length he broke out using most violent
gesticulations, and exhibiting a most inhuman expression of
countenance, “Suppose God was here I must kill him, one minute.”
“You what? You kill God?” exclaimed I, quite taken aback and
almost breathless with the novel and diabolical notion, “You kill God?
why you talk all some fool (like a fool); you cannot kill God; and
suppose it possible that He could die, everything would cease to
exist. He is the Spirit of the Universe. But he can kill you.”
“I know I cannot kill him; but suppose I could kill him I would.”
“Where does God live?”
“For top.”
“How?” He pointed to the zenith.
“And suppose you could, why would you kill him?”
“Because he makes men to die.”
“Why, my friend,” in a conciliatory manner, “you would not wish to
live for ever, would you?”
“Yes; I want to stand” (remain for ever).
“But you will be old by-and-by, and if you live long enough will
become very infirm, like that old man,” pointing to a man very old for
an African, and thin, and lame, and almost blind, who had come into
the court during the foregoing conversation to ask some favour, “and
like him you will become lame, and deaf, and blind, and will be able
to take no pleasure; would it not be better, then, for you to die when
this takes place, and you are in pain and trouble, and so make room
for your son as your father did for you?”
“No, it would not. I want to stand all same I stand now.”
“But supposing you should go to a place of happiness after death,
and——”
“I no savvy nothing about that. I know that I now live and have too
many wives and niggers (slaves) and canoes” (he did not mean it
when he said he had too many wives, etc.; it is their way of
expressing a great number), “and that I am king, and plenty of ships
come to my country. I know no other ting, and I want to stand.”
I offered a reply, but he would hear no more, and so the
conversation on that subject ceased, and we proceeded to discuss
one not much more agreeable to him, the payment of a very
considerable debt which he owed me.
Getting round to the south of Africa we find but little improvement
in the matter of the religious belief of royalty, at least according to
what may be gleaned from another “conversation,” this time between
the missionary Moffat and an African monarch:
“Sitting down beside this great man, illustrious for war and
conquest, and amidst nobles and councillors, including rain-makers
and others of the same order, I stated to him that my object was to
tell him my news. His countenance lighted up, hoping to hear of feats
of war, destruction of tribes, and such-like subjects, so congenial to
his savage disposition. When he found my topics had solely a
reference to the Great Being, of whom the day before he had told me
he knew nothing, and of the Saviour’s mission to this world, whose
name he had never heard, he resumed his knife and jackal’s skin
and hummed a native air. One of his men sitting near me appeared
struck with the character of the Redeemer, which I was
endeavouring to describe, and particularly with his miracles. On
hearing that he raised the dead he very naturally exclaimed, ‘What
an excellent doctor he must have been to make dead men alive.’
This led me to describe his power and how the power would be
exercised at the last day in raising the dead. In the course of my
remarks the ear of the monarch caught the startling news of a
resurrection. ‘What,’ he exclaimed with astonishment, ‘what are
these words about; the dead, the dead arise?’ ‘Yes,’ was my reply,
‘all the dead shall arise.’ ‘Will my father arise?’ ‘Yes,’ I answered,
‘your father will arise.’ ‘Will all the slain in battle arise?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And
will all that have been killed and devoured by lions, tigers, hyænas,
and crocodiles, again revive?’ ‘Yes, and come to judgment.’ ‘And will
those whose bodies have been left to waste and to wither on the
desert plains, and scattered to the winds, arise?’ he asked with a
kind of triumph, as if he had now fixed me. ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘not one
will be left behind.’ This I repeated with increased emphasis. After
looking at me for a few moments he turned to his people, to whom
he spoke with a stentorian voice: ‘Hark, ye wise men, whoever is
among you the wisest of past generations, did ever your ears hear
such strange and unheard-of news?’ and addressing himself to one
whose countenance and attire showed that he had seen many years
and was a personage of no common order, ‘Have you ever heard
such strange news as these?’ ‘No,’ was the sage’s answer; ‘I had
supposed that I possessed all the knowledge of the country, for I
have heard the tales of many generations. I am in the place of the
ancients, but my knowledge is confounded with the words of his
mouth. Surely he must have lived long before the period when we
were born.’ Makaba then turning and addressing himself to me, and
laying his hand on my breast, said: ‘Father, I love you much. Your
visit and your presence have made my heart white as milk. The
words of your mouth are sweet as honey, but the words of a
resurrection are too great to be heard. I do not wish to hear again
about the dead rising; the dead cannot arise; the dead must not
arise.’ ‘Why,’ I enquired, ‘can so great a man refuse knowledge and
turn away from wisdom? Tell me, my friend, why I must not speak of
a resurrection.’ Raising and uncovering his arm, which had been
strong in battle, and shaking his hand as if quivering a spear, he
replied, ‘I have slain my thousands, and shall they arise?’ Never
before had the light of divine revelation dawned upon his savage
mind, and of course his conscience had never accused him; no, not
for one of the thousands of deeds of rapine and murder which had
marked his course through a long career.
“Addressing a Namaqua chief, I asked, ‘Did you ever hear of a
God?’ ‘Yes, we have heard that there is a God, but we do not know
right.’ ‘Who told you that there is a God?’ ‘We heard it from other
people.’ ‘Who made the sea?’ ‘A girl made it on her coming to
maturity, when she had several children at once. When she made it
the sweet and bitter waters were separated. One day she sent some
of her children to fetch sweet water whilst the others were in the
field, but the children were obstinate and would not fetch the water,
upon which she got angry and mixed the sweet and bitter waters
together; from that day we are no longer able to drink the water, and
people have learned to swim and run upon the water.’ ‘Did you ever
see a ship?’ ‘Yes, we have seen them a long time ago.’ ‘Did you ever
hear who made the first one?’ ‘No, we never heard it.’ ‘Did you never
hear old people talk about it?’ ‘No, we never heard it from them.’
‘Who made the heavens?’ ‘We do not know what man made them.’
‘Who made the sun?’ ‘We always heard that those people at the sea
made it; when she goes down they cut her in pieces and fry her in a
pot and then put her together again and bring her out at the other
side. Sometimes the sun is over our head and at other times she
must give place to the moon to pass by.’ They said the moon had
told to mankind that we must die and not become alive again; that is
the reason that when the moon is dark we sometimes become ill. ‘Is
there any difference between man and beast?’ ‘We think man made
the beasts.’ ‘Did you ever see a man that made beasts?’ ‘No; I only
heard so from others.’ ‘Do you know you have a soul?’ ‘I do not know
it.’ ‘How shall it be with us after death?’ ‘When we are dead, we are
dead; when we have died we go over the sea-water at that side
where the devil is.’ ‘What do you mean by devil?’ ‘He is not good; all
people who die run to him.’ ‘How does the devil behave to them, well
or ill?’ ‘You shall see; all our people are there who have died (in the
ships). Those people in the ships are masters over them.’”
With such rulers it is not surprising to find the common people
woefully ignorant and superstitious. The crocodile figures
prominently in their religious belief. In the Bamangwato and Bakwain
tribes, if a man is either bitten, or even has had water splashed over
him with a reptile’s tail, he is expelled his tribe. “When on the Zouga,”
says Dr. Livingstone, “we saw one of the Bamangwato living among
the Bayeye, who had the misfortune to have been bitten, and driven
out of his tribe in consequence. Fearing that I would regard him with
the same disgust which his countrymen profess to feel, he would not
tell me the cause of his exile; but the Bayeye informed me of it; and
the scars of the teeth were visible on his thigh. If the Bakwains
happened to go near an alligator, they would spit on the ground and
indicate his presence by saying “Boles ki bo,” There is sin. They
imagine the mere sight of it would give inflammation of the eyes; and
though they eat the zebra without hesitation, yet if one bites a man
he is expelled the tribe, and is obliged to take his wife and family
away to the Kalahari. These curious relics of the animal worship of
former times scarcely exist among the Makololo. Sebituane acted on
the principle, “Whatever is food for men is food for me,” so no man is
here considered unclean. The Barotse appear inclined to pray to
alligators, and eat them too, for when I wounded a water antelope,
called onochose, it took to the water. When near the other side of the
river, an alligator appeared at its tail, and then both sank together.
Mashauana, who was nearer to it than I, told me that though he had
called to it to let his meat alone, it refused to listen.”
 Divination Scene.
The Southern African has most implicit belief in witch power.
Whatever is incomprehensible to him must be submitted to a “witch
man,” and be by him construed. While Mr. Casalis was a guest
among the Basutos, he had opportunity of witnessing several of
these witch ceremonies. Let the reader picture to himself a long
procession of black men almost in a state of nudity, driving an ox
before them, advancing towards a spot of rising ground, on which
are a number of huts surrounded with reeds. A fierce-looking man,
his body plastered over with ochre, his head shaded by long
feathers, his left shoulder covered with a panther skin, and having a
javelin in his hand, springs forwards, seizes the animal, and after
shutting it up in a safe place, places himself at the head of the troop,
who still continue their march. He then commences the song of
divination, and every voice joins in the cry. “Death, death, to the base
sorcerer who has stolen into our midst like a shadow. We will find
him, and he shall pay with his head. Death, death to the sorcerer.”
The diviner then brandishes his javelin, and strikes it into the ground
as if he were already piercing his victim. Then raising his head
proudly, he executes a dance accompanied with leaps of the most
extraordinary kind, passing under his feet the handle of his lance,
which he holds with both hands. On reaching his abode, he again
disappears, and shuts himself up in a hut into which no one dare
enter. The consulters then stop and squat down side by side, forming
a complete circle. Each one has in his hand a short club. Loud
acclamations soon burst forth, the formidable diviner comes forth
from his sanctuary where he has been occupied in preparing the
sacred draught, of which he has just imbibed a dose sufficient to
enable him to discover the secrets of all hearts. He springs with one
bound into the midst of the assembly: all arms are raised at once,
and the ground trembles with the blows of the clubs. If this dismal
noise does not awake the infernal gods whom he calls to council, it
serves at least to strike terror into the souls of those wretches who
are still harbouring sinister designs. The diviner recites with great
volubility some verses in celebration of his own praise, and then
proceeds to discover of what the present consists, which he expects
in addition to the ox he has already received, and in whose hands
this present will be found. This first trial of his clairvoyance is
designed to banish every doubt. One quick glance at a few
confederates dispersed throughout the assembly apprises them of
their duty.
“There are,” cries the black charlatan, “many objects which man
may use in the adornment of his person. Shall I speak of those
perforated balls of iron which we get from Barolong?”
 The assembly strike the ground with their clubs, but the
confederates do it gently.
“Shall I speak of those little beads of various colours which the
whites as we are told pick up by the sea side?”
All strike with equal violence.
“I might have said rather that you had brought me one of those
brilliant rings of copper.”
The blows this time are unequal.
“But no, I see your present; I distinguish it perfectly well.... It is the
necklace of the white men.”
The whole assembly strike on the ground violently. The diviner is
not mistaken.
But he has disappeared; he is gone to drink a second dose of the
prepared beverage.
Now he comes again. During the first act the practised eye has
not failed to observe an individual who seemed to be more absorbed
than the rest, and who betrayed some curiosity and a considerable
degree of embarrassment. He knows therefore who is in possession
of the present; but in order to add a little interest to the proceedings,
he amuses himself for an instant, turns on his heel, advances now to
one, now to the other, and then with the certainty of a sudden
inspiration, rushes to the right one and lifts up his mantle.
Now he says, “Let us seek out the offender. Your community is
composed of men of various tribes. You have among you Bechuanas
(unequal blows on the ground), Batlokoas (blows still unequal),
Basias (all strike with equal violence), Bataungs (blows unequal). For
my own part, I hate none of those tribes. The inhabitants of the same
country ought all to love one another without any distinction of origin.
Nevertheless, I must speak. Strike, strike, the sorcerer belongs to
the Basias.”
Violent and prolonged blows.
 The diviner goes again to drink from the vessel containing his
wisdom. He has now only to occupy himself with a very small
fraction of the criminated population. On his return he carefully goes
over the names of the individuals belonging to this fraction. This is
very easy in a country where almost all the proper names are
borrowed from one or other of the kingdoms of nature. The different
degrees of violence with which the clubs fall upon the ground give
him to understand in what order he must proceed in his investigation,
and the farce continues thus till the name of the culprit is hit on, and
the farce of trial is brought to an end, and the tragedy of punishment
begins.
The Damaras of South Africa have some curious notions about
the colour of oxen: some will not eat the flesh of those marked with
red spots; some with black, or white; or should a sheep have no
horns, some will not eat the flesh thereof. So, should one offer meat
to a Damara, very likely he will ask about the colour of the animal;
whether it had horns or no. And should it prove to be forbidden meat,
he will refuse it; sometimes actually dying of hunger rather than
partake of it. To such an extent is this religious custom carried out,
that sometimes they will not approach any of the vessels in which
the meat is cooked; and the smoke of the fire by which it is cooked is
considered highly injurious. For every wild animal slain by a young
man, his father makes four oblong incisions in front of his body;
moreover, he is presented with a sheep or cow, the young of which,
should it have any, are slaughtered and eaten; males only are
allowed to partake of it. Should a sportsman return from a successful
hunt, he takes water in his mouth, and ejects it three times over his
feet, as also in the fire of his own hearth. When cattle are required
for food, they are suffocated; but when for sacrifices, they are
speared.
One of the most lucrative branches of a heathen priest’s
profession is the “manufacture” of rain; at the same time, and as may
be easily understood, the imposture is surrounded by dangers of no
ordinary nature. If the rain fall within a reasonable time, according to
the bargain, so delighted are the people, made as they are in
droughty regions contented and happy, whereas but yesterday they
were withering like winter stalks, that the rain maker is sure to come
in for abundant presents over and above the terms agreed on. But
should the rain maker fail in the terms of his contract, should he
promise “rain within three days,” and the fourth, and the fifth, and the
sixth, and the seventh day arrive, and find the brilliant sky
untarnished, and the people parched and mad with thirst, what more
horrible position can be imagined than his whose fault it appears to
be that the universal thirst is not slaked? “There never was yet
known a rain maker,” writes a well-known missionary, “who died a
natural death.” No wonder! The following narrative of the
experiments and perplexities of a rain maker furnished by Mr. Moffat
may be worth perusal.
Having for a number of years experienced severe drought, the
Bechuanas at Kuruman held a council as to the best measures for
removing the evil. After some debate a resolution was passed to
send for a rain maker of great renown, then staying among the
Bahurutsi, two hundred miles north-east of the station. Accordingly
commissioners were dispatched, with strict injunctions not to return
without the man; but it was with some misgiving as to the success of
their mission that the men started. However, by large promises, they
succeeded beyond their most sanguine expectations.
During the absence of the ambassadors the heavens had been as
brass, and scarcely a passing cloud obscured the sky, which blazed
with the dazzling rays of a vertical sun. But strange to relate the very
day that the approach of the rain maker was announced, the clouds
began to gather thickly, the lightning darted and the thunder rolled in
awful grandeur, accompanied by a few drops of rain. The deluded
multitude were wild with delight; they rent the sky with their
acclamations of joy, and the earth rang with their exulting and
maddening shouts. Previously to entering the town, the rain maker
sent a peremptory order to all the inhabitants to wash their feet.
Scarcely was the message delivered before every soul, young and
old, noble and ignoble, flew to the adjoining river to obey the
command of the man whom they imagined was now collecting in the
heavens all his stores of rain.
 The impostor proclaimed aloud that this year the women must
cultivate gardens on the hills and not in the valleys, for the latter
would be deluged. The natives in their enthusiasm saw already their
corn-fields floating in the breeze and their flocks and herds return
lowing homewards by noonday from the abundance of pasture. He
told them how in his wrath he had desolated the cities of the
enemies of his people by stretching forth his hand and commanding
the clouds to burst upon them; how he had arrested the progress of
a powerful army by causing a flood to descend, which formed a
mighty river and stayed their course. These and many other
pretended displays of his power were received as sober truths, and
the chief and the nobles gazed on him with silent amazement. The
report of his fame spread like wildfire, and the rulers of the
neighbouring tribes came to pay him homage.
In order to carry on the fraud, he would, when clouds appeared,
command the women neither to plant nor sow, lest the seeds should
be washed away. He would also require them to go to the fields and
gather certain roots of herbs, with which he might light what
appeared to the natives mysterious fires. Elate with hope, they would
go in crowds to the hills and valleys, collect herbs, return to the town
with songs, and lay the gatherings at the magician’s feet. With these
he would sometimes proceed to certain hills and raise smoke; gladly
would he have called up the wind also, if he could have done so, well
knowing that the latter is frequently the precursor of rain. He would
select the time of new and full moon for his purpose, aware that at
those seasons there was frequently a change in the atmosphere. But
the rain maker found the clouds in these parts rather harder to
manage than those of the Bahurutsi country, whence he came.
One day as he was sound asleep a shower fell, on which one of
the principal men entered his house to congratulate him on the
happy event; but to his utter amazement he found the magician
totally insensible to what was transpiring. “Hela ka rare (halloo, by
my father)! I thought you were making rain,” said the intruder. Arising
from his slumber, and seeing his wife sitting on the floor shaking a
milk sack in order to obtain a little butter to anoint her hair, the wily
rain maker adroitly replied, “Do you not see my wife churning rain as
fast as she can?” This ready answer gave entire satisfaction, and it
presently spread through the town that the rain maker had churned
the rain out of a milk sack.
The moisture, however, caused by this shower soon dried up, and
for many a long week afterwards not a cloud appeared. The women
had cultivated extensive fields, but the seed was lying in the soil as it
had been thrown from the hand; the cattle were dying for want of
pasture, and hundreds of emaciated men were seen going to the
fields in quest of unwholesome roots and reptiles, while others were
perishing with hunger.
 Making Rain.
All these circumstances irritated the rain maker very much, and he
complained that secret rogues were disobeying his proclamations.
When urged to make repeated trials, he would reply, “You only give
me sheep and goats to kill, therefore I can only make goat rain; give
me fat slaughter oxen, and I shall let you see ox rain.”
One night a small cloud passed over, and a single flash of
lightning, from which a heavy peal of thunder burst, struck a tree in
the town. Next day the rain maker and a number of people
assembled to perform the usual ceremony on such an event. The
stricken tree was ascended, and roots and ropes of grass were
bound round different parts of the trunk. When these bandages were
made, the conjuror deposited some of his nostrums, and got
quantities of water handed up, which he poured with great solemnity
on the wounded tree, while the assembled multitude shouted. The
tree was now hewn down, dragged out of the town and burned to
ashes. Soon after the rain maker got large bowls of water, with which
was mixed an infusion of bulbs. All the men of the town were then
made to pass before him, when he sprinkled each person with a
zebra’s tail dipped in water.
Finding that this did not produce the desired effect, the impostor
had recourse to another stratagem. He well knew that baboons were
not very easily caught amongst rocky glens and shelving precipices,
and therefore, in order to gain time, he informed the men that to
make rain he must have a baboon. Moreover, that not a hair on its
body was to be wanting; in short the animal should be free from
blemish. After a long and severe pursuit, and with bodies much
lacerated, a band of chosen runners succeeded in capturing a young
baboon, which they brought back triumphantly and exultingly. On
seeing the animal, the rogue put on a countenance exhibiting the
most intense sorrow, exclaiming, “My heart is rent in pieces! I am
dumb with grief!” pointing at the same time to the ear of the baboon
that was slightly scratched, and the tail, which had lost some hair. He
added, “Did I not tell you I could not bring rain if there was one hair
wanting?”
He had often said that if they could procure him the heart of a lion
he would show them he could make rain so abundant, that a man
might think himself well off to be under shelter, as when it fell it might
sweep whole towns away. He had discovered that the clouds
required strong medicines, and that a lion’s heart would do the
business. To obtain this the rain maker well knew was no joke. One
day it was announced that a lion had attacked one of the cattle out-
posts, not far from the town, and a party set off for the twofold
purpose of getting a key to the clouds and disposing of a dangerous
enemy. The orders were imperative, whatever the consequences
might be. Fortunately the lion was shot dead by a man armed with a
gun. Greatly elated by their success, they forthwith returned with
their prize, singing the conqueror’s song in full chorus. The rain
maker at once set about preparing his medicines, kindled his fires,
and, standing on the top of a hill, he stretched forth his hands,
beckoning to the clouds to draw near, occasionally shaking his spear
and threatening them with his ire, should they disobey his
commands. The populace believed all this and wondered the rain
would not fall.
Having discovered that a corpse which had been put into the
ground some weeks before had not received enough water at its
burial, and knowing the aversion of the Bechuanas to the dead body,
he ordered the corpse to be taken up, washed, and re-interred.
Contrary to his expectation, and horrible as the ceremony must have
been, it was performed. Still the heavens remained inexorable.
Having exhausted his skill and ingenuity, the impostor began to be
sorely puzzled to find something on which to lay the blame. Like all
of his profession, he was a subtle fellow, in the habit of studying
human nature, affable, acute, and exhibiting a dignity of mien, with
an ample share of self-complacency which he could not hide.
Hitherto he had studiously avoided giving the least offence to the
missionaries, whom he found were men of peace who would not
quarrel. He frequently condescended to visit them, and in the course
of conversation would often give a feeble assent to their opinions as
to the sources of that element over which he pretended to have
sovereign control. However, finding all his wiles unavailing to
produce the desired result, and, notwithstanding the many proofs of
kindness he had received from the missionaries, he began to hint
that the reverend gentlemen were the cause of the obstinacy of the
clouds. One day it was discovered that the rain had been prevented
by Mr. Moffat bringing a bag of salt with him from a journey that he
had undertaken to Griqua town. But finding on examination that the
reported salt was only white clay or chalk, the natives could not help
laughing at their own credulity.