Co-Creating Innovative Tourist Experiences: Towards an Integrative Framework

Abstract

Co-creating tourist experiences helps create value for the tourists resulting from their interactions with tourism service providers and the physical environment. However, the practices and procedures that drive the co-creation of innovative tourist experiences are still not clear. We address this research gap by combining the resource-based view (RBV) and service-dominant (S-D) logic to develop specific hypotheses about the mediating role of value co-creation in the process by which internal and external resource orientations impact radical and incremental innovations, which in turn influence tourist experience and outcomes (brand advocacy and revisit intentions). We find support for most of our hypotheses using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze data from matching samples of 191 tourists and managers in tourism provider firms in India. Specifically, external (but not internal) resource orientation positively affects both incremental and radical innovations, which in turn positively impact tourist experience, brand advocacy and revisit intentions. Finally, value co-creation fully mediates the positive effect of internal (but not external) resource orientation on both incremental and radical innovations. These findings would help tourism providers design co-creative and innovative tourism strategies to manage and improve tourist experiences as well as their brand advocacy and revisit intentions.