Tourist Experience Design: A Storytelling Framework

Stories are at the heart of tourist experiences, and not surprisingly, there is increasing use of stories by tourism businesses and destination marketing organizations in their promotional activities. The use of stories within tourist experiences is also beginning to emerge, although to date the focus has been on telling destination or business stories to tourists, who are mostly cast in the role of audience member. A more comprehensive model of tourist stories offers, however, a wider range of more innovative ways in which tourists can be involved in, and create, their own travel stories. This chapter will use such a model to generate and apply principles for tourism practice through a case study of an Australian island destination.