Perceptions of tourism products

Jing Bill Xu

Tourism Management, 2010, vol. 31, issue 5, 607-610

Abstract: The concept of the tourism product has been rooted in the minds of industry professionals as the industry has rapidly developed. Yet research into the tourism product and its constitution has not been a particular focus. Smith (1994) was one of the first, and remains one of the few, researchers to have decomposed the tourism product into basic elements. His five elements formed a single core and a series of four encapsulating shells. The study reported here first clarified the definition of tourism product and employed Smith's framework to analyze various tourism products in different tourism sectors. A student sample was used in a survey to rate the importance of five elements of tourism products. The results showed that the five elements were prevalent but that they differed in their importance for tourists across a variety of tourism products. Tangible physical plant was considered to be the most important component of nearly all tourism products. Finally, a new model of the tourism product is proposed here, and managerial priorities when creating sustained and satisfying tourist experiences are discussed.

Keywords: Tourism product (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517709001216

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:touman:v:31:y:2010:i:5:p:607-610

DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2009.06.011

Access Statistics for this article

Tourism Management is currently edited by Chris Ryan

More articles in Tourism Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().