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The Experience Economy Logic in the Wellness Tourism Industry

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Co-Creation and Well-Being in Tourism

Part of the book series: Tourism on the Verge ((TV))

Abstract

The global tourism industry and the wellness industry are both undergoing a major growth phase fuelled by the consumers’ ever-increasing desire for not only emotional experiences but also more permanent transformations and lifestyle changes. This chapter presents the wellness tourism industry as a model example of the experience industry and discusses wellness tourism experiences in the light of value creation and innovation. Through qualitative empirical data from the Finnish tourism industry, we examine the current wellness tourism offerings and analyse how the service providers are developing their offerings in order to respond to the expectations of future wellness tourists. The data reveals a certain understanding of the experience economy logic and emphasizes the strong pressure for constant innovation. However, it seems that the service providers mainly just try to develop new products and services instead of truly engaging consumers in the value creation processes. This highlights the strong product and service focus of the value creation and the lack of real customer centricity, which indeed forms the core of the entire wellness ideology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Juulia Räikkönen & Miia Grénman

Authors
  1. Juulia Räikkönen
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  2. Miia Grénman
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Correspondence to Juulia Räikkönen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. CEFAGE, University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal

    Antónia Correia

  2. Dokuz Eylül University, Izmir, Turkey

    Metin Kozak

  3. University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Juergen Gnoth

  4. University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA

    Alan Fyall

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Räikkönen, J., Grénman, M. (2017). The Experience Economy Logic in the Wellness Tourism Industry. In: Correia, A., Kozak, M., Gnoth, J., Fyall, A. (eds) Co-Creation and Well-Being in Tourism. Tourism on the Verge. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44108-5_1

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