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 Especially
the leisure industry and the tourism industry enrich their products and services
with so-called elements of experience to become more attractive. Nowadays the
question is, if we are travelling to discover experiences, or if we only regard
travelling as a further element of an event-enriched period of life?
Experiences are supremely an individual and hence subjective
feeling. Therefore, especially for business companies, it is hardly possible to
produce, guarantee or standardize experiences deliberately. Furthermore
consumers behave different as companies generally expect. This discrepancy of
what companies expecting from costumers behaviour has to do with the so-called
experience rationality which is unfortunately unpredictable and uncontrollable.
The term “experience rationality” means generally an inside oriented impression
of individually sensed experiences. Therefore objects do not have to fulfill
only the basic benefit and added values, but rather focus on how humans sense
the real consumption process and related and lived emotions. But there cannot be
any marketing concepts for obviously irrational acting target groups, because
any assumption of customers behaviours are missing a valid basis, on which
necessary marketing operations or segmentations of target groups could be
developed. For the (tourism-) industry this circumstance is very unsatisfying,
because target groups cannot be recorded reliably. This circumstance induces a
change: According to this so-called “experience economy” the tourism industry
hopes to arouse the perception of an experience by the costumers, while
enriching their range of products with events and other elements of experience
as much as possible. But exactly therein is the dilemma! Would everything really
permanent celebrated as an experience, an experience would per se devalued and
would not have anylonger a value, because an experience could not anymore
identified as an experience, due to losing its difference in relation to daily
life. From that moment paradoxically the none-experience would mutate into an
experience. The very special of an experience is that it kicks someone out of
the daily routine. The experience separates the particular from the general,
which awards everyday life with an affecting flavour full with emotion and
sustainability. In that way an experience and its content as well as its quality
can be sensed and described as an unique event, that makes the difference to
daily grind.
The tourism industry would do better, if they would not permanently
celebrate and merchandise everything as an incomparable happening. They would
better not permanent straining the terms “event” and "experience". Because
overstretching these terms arouses customers expectation. In the long run this
would lead to increasing disappointments by the customers and as a result the
providers have to face rising expenses and costs just to meet the expectations
at least approximately.
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