Development of a Scale to Measure Memorable Tourism Experiences

Abstract

The quality experiences provided to customers, which are indeed memorable, directly determine a business's ability to generate revenue (Pine and Gilmore 1999). However, the extant tourism literature has provided limited explanation of the factors that characterize memorable tourism experiences. Thus, the goal of the present study was to develop a valid and reliable measurement scale that will assist in understanding the concept and in improving the effective management of the memorable experience. Following Churchill's (1979) recommended process, we developed a 24-item memorable tourism experience scale that we believe is applicable to most destination areas. The scale comprises seven domains: hedonism, refreshment, local culture, meaningfulness, knowledge, involvement, and novelty. The data support this dimensional structure of the memorable tourism experience as well as its internal consistency and validity (i.e., content, construct, convergent, and discriminant validity). Theoretical and managerial implications of the study results are discussed in detail.

The Challenge to Foster Foreign Students’ Experiences for Sustainable Higher Educational Institutions

“…As expected, tourism is one of the economic sectors that benefits most from experiential marketing, as has being demonstrated by recent works in different contexts [31][32][33][34]. These works confirm the power of experiential marketing in destinations promotion, and the relationship between the emotional and intellectual dimensions of visitor experiences, travel intentions, and destination loyalty.…”

“…The positive significant parameters obtained suggests that a high-richness destination image (β = 0.331) is very important in improving experience, as well as motivation (β = 0.299) and information (β = 0.172). In addition, and according to previous works in the field [21,25,26,29,30,32,33,38,50], the experience is dominated by internal emotions, although external conditions are also important for gaining a positive global experience abroad. In the Erasmus student case, our results revealed that cultural factors also significantly contribute to creating a great experience.…”

“…The typology of tourism preferred by students was adapted from Prayag [69] and Hosany et al [30]. In order to measure the experiences, we parted from the scale developed by Kim et al [33]. Finally, to measure loyalty, we followed the work of Gallarza, Saura [48], and Forgas-Coll et al [70].…”

A Visitor Experience Scale: Historic Sites and Museums

“…Correspondingly, in the development of a scale to measure memorable tourism experiences, Kim, Ritchie, and McCormick (2012) also showed the involvement factor on their scale dimension list. Again, no evidence was provided to suggest this factor's relationship to flow experience.…”

Tourists as Mobile Gamers: Gamification for Tourism Marketing

“…The tourism industry provides multi-dimensional and multifaceted experiences (Kim, Ritchie & Mccormick, 2012;Neuhofer, Buhalis & Ladkin, 2012). Researchers suggest that leisure experiences are about feeling, fantasy and fun (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982), escape and relaxation (Beard & Ragheb, 1983), entertainment (Pine & Gilmore, 1999;Farber & Hall 2007), novelty and surprise (Dunman & Mattila, 2005).…”