The interrelationship between tourist satisfaction and experiences: How does one contribute to the other?

Abstract

Among all the other emotions, perhaps satisfaction can be the most common one which has been extensively studied. The majority of these studies examine this emotion as an outcome of the perceived performance of products and services consumed or the personal experience attained. However, today, experience has become such a dynamic and complex concept that generates spontaneous satisfaction moments (moments of truth) that may or may not contribute to the level of overall satisfaction at the end of experience process. These satisfaction moments may also affect one’s decision to continue with experiencing. The most widely known example is the first impression that is supposed to be created at the very first moments of experience in a hotel in order to strengthen the memorability of the experience. This chapter aims to discuss this inter-relationship between satisfaction and experience based on the findings of an empirical study conducted with the focus of hospitality experiences in five-star hotels. Hotels serve such a fruitful research domain to analyze the experience concept based on the complex form constructed with various and hybrid sub-experiences. Satisfaction triggered by these sub-experiences may affect the overall perceptions of experiences. Through the outputs of narrative analysis, the findings show how people evaluate their hospitality experience as memorable in relation to experience components and how the overall experience is perceived if satisfaction is the expressed outcome.