Social holidays as a tourist experience in Finland

Raija Komppula, Riikka Ilves and David Airey

Tourism Management, 2016, vol. 52, issue C, 521-532

Abstract: The aim of this study is to investigate the factors that affect the formation of the social holiday experience, and the role of specially arranged activities in that experience. It draws on the specific case of Finland. An intrinsic, intensive case study research strategy is applied and an ethnographic approach is taken using observation, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaires. The findings indicate that the social holiday experience is clearly linked to everything which took place during the holiday. This supports earlier research on service experiences. Six categories of factors contribute to the social tourism experience: interaction, physical environment, content of the activities, food and mealtime conditions, situational factors and personal factors. Social holiday clients do not expect the holiday to be anything extraordinary.

Keywords: Social holiday; Social tourism; Tourist experience; Activities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517715001697

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:52:y:2016:i:c:p:521-532

DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2015.07.016

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 ().