The tourism market in the Middle East and throughout the world is rapidly changing. Consumers are now better informed, increasingly demanding, less forgiving, more price sensitive, time starved and spoilt for choice.

Additionally, the very motivation of consumers is changing. The suppliers who best understand the emerging customer will be in superior position to deliver on changed expectations.

In the late 1990s, leading academics were writing on the move of suppliers away from providing mere services just as decades before their predecessors had acknowledged that consumers had moved from buying goods to acquiring services.

The subsequent effect on the economy had been seismic. Blending basic ingredients to make a child's birthday cake had suddenly given way to simply ordering one from the bakery or supermarket.

Then later in the 1990s even this was being replaced by outsourcing the whole exercise to specialist party planners who would offer much more than just the cake (the product) or the babysitting (the service). They would offer an 'experience' for which a far greater price would be charged.

So what is an experience? While goods and services are "external to the buyer, experiences are inherently personal by existing only in the mind of an individual who is engaged on an emotional, physical, intellectual or even spiritual level."*. Consequently, no two people can by definition have the same experience.

Experiences have always been at the heart of the entertainment business. Witness the 50 years that Disney has successfully delivered entertainment experiences.

But since the 1990s the concept of selling an entertaining experience has moved well beyond amusement parks.

In the hospitality industry the food at places such as Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood has become merely part of the process of "eatertainment". Niketown does not simply sell shoes, but provides "shoppertainment".

Edutainment

Museums say they are in the business of "edutainment" while computer consumers move in the world of "virtual world experiences".

Today shopping malls create holistic experiences where retailing merges seamlessly with the likes of water parks, amusement parks, entertainment performances, active child-minding and increasingly experiential learning opportunities (such as the Jurassic experience in Dubai's Mall of Arabia).

The tourism industry is not immune to such trends. The new experiential model for destination marketers involves extended duration, engaging in multiple activities for a range of target consumer groups, and a desire to return on the part of consumers in order to acquire new memorable experiences. The provision of such experiences ensures superior value and competitive advantage to the destination.

Indeed, words like 'experiential', 'learning', and 'enrichment' are appearing with increasing frequency in the travel media as new destinations and facilities are promoted. "The demand is growing for travel that engages the senses, stimulates the mind, includes unique activities, and connects in personal ways with travellers on an emotional, physical, spiritual or intellectual level," according to the Canadian Tourism Commission.

Translated into types of visitor experiences these include reaching out to the community to meet local people, enjoying day-to-day local activities, participating in unique interactive activities, going behind-the-scenes at major attractions and sharing experiences with family, friends and fellow travellers.

Those involved in tourism recognise that and cater to these emerging customers by carefully staging and choreographing activities. Personal encounters and authentic experiences designed to create positive emotions and long-lasting memories will attract new markets, satisfy the requirement for engaging travel and induce customer loyalty.

Five points arise from this statement. The first recognises the entertainment element in each experience and encourages the tourism supplier to seek it out, then deliver it in an attractive and engaging way.

The second concerns previous segmentations of mass markets into niche segments. Because every experience is personal, tourism suppliers should rather consider their markets as being customised to meet sub-groups of individual personalities. This results in the creation of 'mass-customised' segments that better reflect the characteristics and needs of individuals.

The third speaks to the nature of experiential 'satisfaction'. Rather than referring to a general acceptance of product or service quality, satisfaction should rather be thought of as the difference between what a customer expects to experience versus what he perceives he experiences. Perception is reality and the expectation of an experience can take many forms - intellectual, physical, emotional or even spiritual. Where the customer perceives little difference between expectation and experience delivery we say that there is little customer sacrifice between what he accepts and what he really wanted. The result is an increase in the propensity to repeat the same or similar experiences.

Importance of emotion

The fourth point relates to the importance of emotion to the customer experience. Contrary to such widely-used terms as 'edutainment' that seem to suggest that learning might be able to be gained without emotion, there has appeared some new and surprising academic and neuroscientific research.

It has recently been found that all learning of whatever form travels through the limbic system of the brain, where it is 'tagged' with an associated emotion. Consequently, not only is all learning 'emotion-laden' but the greater the strength of the emotion the greater the chance that the experience will be remembered. Tourist suppliers that recognise this fact will therefore seek to infuse their customer experiences with positive meaningful emotions.

The fifth point focuses on the term 'meaningful', which is vitally important because it relates to issues of self-identity. All human beings crave meaning in their lives by feeling connected, important and understood by those around them.

Consequently, experiences that in some way reinforce a sense of self will be interpreted as meaningful and will be associated with an emotional reaction. Such emotions are important because they reinforce our learned reactions to our experiences, thereby helping us to form a view of ourselves and the world. How often have we heard someone say that such-and-such activity is "just not me"? Where did this self concept come from if not learned from personal experience and reinforced by emotion.

As the renowned academic Norman Denzin said: "To understand who a person is it is necessary to understand emotion." To this could be added: "And to understand an individual tourist's experience it is necessary to understand their learned emotion."

So important is the need to infuse meaning into experiences that it has been referred to by some writers as "the largest unmet need of [leisure] consumers... that will shape the way they plan, purchase and play"**. Indeed those organisations that produce meaningful experiences will be the stars of the new economy.

*(Pine and Gilmore, 1998),**(Norton, 2003)

A National Tour Association (NTA) educational seminar identified experiences as "the next generation of tourism products to grow tourism business". The London School of Business reports that "those who deliver memorable customer experiences consistently create superior value and competitive advantage". The World Tourism Organisation (WTO) states that "the point is to achieve a complete participative experience that provides new knowledge and authentic experiences".

Experiences are potentially valuable, memorable, sociable, profitable and sometimes even transforming. Indeed with transformation the organisation's economic offering is no longer the product it makes nor the services it provides. When the customer desires to be somehow changed through the experience and achieves that result the organisation's offering is indeed the individual himself!

In an increasingly competitive world the provision of meaningful experiences to tourism consumers should be considered to be the vitally important business of market strategists both in government and the private sector. Both cooperatively and individually industry providers must creatively seek out the potential experience in their market offerings.

Whether it be a world-wide airline, a city hotel, a neighbourhood restaurant or even a local taxi, creating an experience that will be retained by the consumer because it was meaningful and induced a positive emotional response is the responsibility of every tourism provider.

To do so needs creativity, an understanding of human nature and an in-depth knowledge of your market, and sometimes the assistance of an outside advisor with vision and a bit of theatrical flair. But it is worth the effort. For above all else it is their experiences that tourists take home and tell their friends about when next chatting by the water cooler at work.

The writer is CFO, Istithmar World. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of his employer.

How can a tourism organisation create a memorable trip?

First: The experience must stand for some truth. It must represent something beyond mere profit. Something that customers can relate to or hold dear. This must be real, not faked.

Second: It must provide the opportunity for the customer to be a participant in the experience, not merely an observer or recipient. They must be immersed in it and engage as many of their senses as possible.

Third: It must make them feel that they are doing something worthwhile not merely being occupied in a diversion or a time-filler. This is particularly so for the ageing baby-boomers who now realise that life is finite and are asking "what have I done with my life?"

Fourth: It must 'tease out the entertainment' in the experience because to do so will induce a positive emotional reaction and, as has already been shown, more emotion leads to more experiential learning.

Fifth: Most importantly, it must create social experiences. Humans are social animals and hence the supplier must not only make the customer feel genuinely welcome (no pre-scripted lines), but also create the circumstances for customers to share experiences (with friends or families), socialise and potentially form new social bonds.

The writer is CFO, Istithmar World. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of his employer.