Tourism Experiences: An Interpretive Approach to Understanding Tourist-Brand Relationships in Technology-Mediated Tourism Service Environments

Tourism in the context of postmodernism, defined by the rapid emergence of information and communication technology, has started focusing on the experiences of individual tourists and their functional, emotional, and symbolic relationships with tourism brands. Based on this context, this chapter explores how the provision of tourist-brand relationships has changed in recent years focusing on individual tourism discourses in technology-mediated tourism service environments. Using a qualitative, interpretive approach, eight in-depth interviews and two focus group discussions were used as the primary data collection method. Findings from thematic analysis illustrate tourists’ awareness of the fragility and temporality of tourism experiences and highlight how they interpret meanings from tourism brands in creating and preserving the overall holiday experience in technology-mediated contexts. It was further uncovered that the conventional marketing theory and practices primarily based on limited stereotypes should be remolded in technology-mediated environments to capture the diversity and complexity of contemporary tourism experiences and add a symbolic aspect to tourism brands. To support and extend the findings, this chapter emphasizes the need to develop novel perspectives that value customer-centered, reflexive, and participatory approaches for conducting tourism marketing research beyond the well-tested conventional research approaches.