The role of relationships in the tourist experience

Abstract

The experience of being a pleasure traveller often poses several unexpected relationship challenges for any individuaL The challenges arrive in several guises. The difficulties and rewards may include dealing with oneself and with one's familiar travel companions, of interacting with fellow travellers who are strangers, and of trying to communicate with the locals across cultural divides. These kinds of issues are of immediate concern to the travellers themselves but there can also be a management interest in these topics. Tourism industry personnel want to influence customer satisfaction and, if improving social rapport in its various forms can achieve this goal, then a commercial interest is assured. The range of relationships inherent in the tourist experience is portrayed in Table 6.1.

This chapter will describe and discuss each social interaction level depicted in Table 6.1. The greatest attention will be paid to travellers' experiences with other travellers because it can be argued that this element is the least well described in the existing literature (Yagi, 2001).