The types of expectations that tourists and travelers have from a destination are always changing. What one desires from a holiday is no longer confined to guided tours of a city’s or region’s highlights. There is a need, an itch, to go beyond the surface features of a location and examine it more thoroughly. Experiential travel has progressively increased in popularity over the previous few years as travel has become more experience-driven.
As a result of generic packaged tours that just scrape the surface of a country’s culture, travelers are growing less interested in mass tourism. Tourists desire authenticity when visiting a new country. Not only do travelers seek more adventurous and exciting travel, but did you know that the average traveler views 27 different websites before making a reservation while looking for activities to do in a destination? The most essential deciding element was the desire for authentic travel in their visual content.
Experiential travel includes immersing yourself in the essence of a destination rather than just passing through it on the surface. Rather than spreading their vacation across all of the desirable qualities of a city or country, visitors choose to focus on one component of the destination. Instead of dining on local food at a restaurant, experiential tourists look for the culinary foundations of traditional dishes in order to better understand the locals’ way of life and culture.
Tourists and travelers are no longer content to merely cross items off their bucket lists. They desire to seek out enriching experiences that allow them to connect more deeply with a place and culture. For many travelers today, authenticity has become a guiding concept. Tourists prefer to spend time connecting with locals rather than just staring out the window of a tourist bus.
Culinary travel has been a big element of the new wave of experiencing travel. Travelers are looking for one-of-a-kind gastronomic experiences wherever they go. Food is so inextricably linked to a place’s culture that it becomes a social and emotional focal point for visitors. Travellers want more interactive experiences, not just passive spectators.
Experiential travel is defined as a traveler’s desire for a deeper immersion and a true authentic and local experience in the nation they are visiting. Finding the best local restaurant, discovering a hidden beach, or learning to prepare the local food are all possibilities. For a long time, travelers’ desires have been shifting toward activity-based experiences, cultural exploration, and gastronomic travel, and the demand continues to expand.
How many times have you looked at a tour and thought to yourself, “This isn’t cutting it for me.” ‘It’s very formulaic.’ When it comes to feeling inspired while traveling, many people desire something more personal. Not only can you learn about the country from many perspectives, but you can also learn about its customs, culture, and arts. When you’re only skimming the surface of a country, travellers discover that it has no meaning.
Interacting with the locals and learning about their lives through their stories is an eye-opening experience for the majority of people. Taking a break from attending a tour where the guide follows a script and instead interacting with a local who has a deeper understanding and enthusiasm for the area, who better to show you around than a native who has lived their entire life in the nation?
It is not only entertaining for guests, but it also gives back to the community. Giving back to the community helps to preserve the culture, way of life, and traditions that visitors have come to appreciate. Getting a local to show you about the city and take you off the beaten path for an unforgettable experience.
In order to achieve this long-term impact, the necessity of travel agents and tour operators has been highlighted. Now that travelers are willing to dig into the unseen and unheard, operators must work twice as hard to bring fresh concepts to guests in a way that appeals to their adventurous spirit.
The entire premise of experiencing travel involves risk-taking and rashness. As a result, tour operators are reporting that travelers are booking substantially closer to their departure dates this year than in previous years. Tour operators must now be more adaptable in their planning, allowing consumers to go outside the limits of the pre-planned tour.
Experiential travel has prompted many tour operators to cooperate with communities, in addition to helping tourism professionals. Furthermore, locals are introduced to the tourist sector on a wider scale, resulting in increased revenue and guests being able to have more authentic experiences.
Despite its seeming ideality, experiential travel has a darker aspect that is often overlooked. Some people already think it’s foolish to travel to a country in the expectation of thoroughly immersing themselves in a particular aspect of it in a matter of days or weeks. Tour operators, on the other hand, continue to profit from this trend and frequently raise their costs, promising customers “special” experiences that they might easily discover themselves, or at a much lower cost.
Experiential travel has a monetary cost for the traveler, but it can also have a cultural cost. These encounters have an artificial quality to them: at best, they can be called a marketing ruse; at worst, they have a long-term harmful impact on the local population’s livelihood and culture. Experiential tourism contributes to the destruction of environmental ecosystems in addition to generating a false reality in some areas.
In the future, those in the travel sector will have to rethink how they serve tourists. Their ingenuity will be put to the test as they strive to provide the genuinely unforgettable experiences that passengers expect.
Check out my related post: What is industrial tourism?
Interesting reads:
https://www.betweenlakeandhighplace.ca/what-is-experiential-tourism/
https://www.women-on-the-road.com/experiential-tourism.html
https://www.jumpstartmag.com/what-is-experiential-travel/
https://www.buddyz.co/en/insights/experiential-tourism-an-immersive-way-of-travel
https://www.trekksoft.com/en/blog/rise-of-experiential-travel
https://travel.earth/the-rise-of-experiential-travel/
https://skift.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/skift-peak-experiential-traveler-report1.pdf
https://www.treehugger.com/what-is-experiential-tourism-4869029
https://thewsh.globalblue.com/the-changing-world-of-experiential-travel/
A Better Man 