Travel Feeds the Experience Economy

Written by: Dr. Scott Rains, Rolling Rains Report

The travel industry knows that it is the quintessential purveyor of positive experience. Destination wedding travel sells the romantic experience. Adventure travel sells the adrenaline experience. Volunteer travel sells the engaged experience. Business travel sells the efficient experience.

What do you experience when the experience you paid for meets your expectations? Satisfaction? Happiness? A desire to do it again?

Good businesses pay attention to customer satisfaction. Focus groups, surveys, mystery shoppers, and common courtesy are all best practice aids to achieve customer satisfaction. Goals are set. Targets are achieved. Customer satisfaction is measured.

Why value customer satisfaction? Well, except for sand in your shoes, a couple extra inches around the waist, and a bunch of mementos, it is that sense of happiness attached to memories of a good trip that is the lasting “product”.

Thinking of experience as product is second nature to the travel and hospitality industry.

B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore wrote the book Experience Economy in 1999.

In it they classify businesses on a spectrum building on commodity markets and progressing through goods, services, experience, and on to transformation businesses. It’s not a big step for businesses in the travel sector to move from selling experience to selling transformation.

To the extent that the industry respects people with disabilities as valued customers, through the application of the seven principles of Universal Design, they will want the experience; they will buy the product. Research from the Open Doors Organization, among others, shows that people with disabilities have the desire, the means, and the time to travel. Given the scarcity of products tailored to people with disabilities the outcome of a well-executed itinerary is almost always transformative for travelers in a market segment hungry for quality travel experience.