Understanding and meeting the challenges of consumer/tourist experience research

This paper seeks to provide a framework that will help us identify and better understand the major challenges we face in consumer/tourist experience research. These challenges have both theoretical and managerial dimensions. Based on an extensive and comprehensive review of the current literature in the field, we have categorised extant knowledge into six main streams of theoretical thinking and empirical research. These streams were identified as the fundamentals of the experience, experience‐seeking behaviours, methodologies used in experience research, the nature of specific tourism experiences, managerial issues in the design and delivery of experiences, and the evolutionary trail of experience thinking. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.