School of Management Working Paper 0907

Dimensions of Tourists’ Emotional Experiences towards Hedonic Holiday Destinations (SoMWP0907)

Sameer Hosany and David Gilbert

Abstract

Destinations are more likely to be successful if they recognize the experiential qualities of their offerings. However, with some exceptions, research into the emotional content of the destination experience remains largely underexplored. This current research addresses this lacuna and empirically investigates the dimensions of tourists’ emotional experiences towards hedonic holiday destinations. Adopting a rigorous scale development procedure, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses identify three salient dimensions to represent the destination emotion scale (DES) namely: joy, love and positive surprise. Additionally, tourists’ emotional experiences were related to satisfaction, which in turn has a significant influence on behavioural intentions. Findings offer important implications for destination marketers in relation to branding and emotional experience management.

Keywords: emotions; tourist experiences; destinations; scale development, post-consumption evaluations.

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