Sequence effects of city tour experiences: A tourism fatigue perspective

Abstract

City tours provide travelers with various experiences by means of a series of attractions, but little attention is paid to the effects that the sequence in which travelers visit these attractions have on their tourism evaluation. The paper aims to investigate the sequence effects of experiences along the experience economy model's two axes. This study analyzed 33,350 records that 7855 travelers on a city tour of Madrid posted of about 525 attractions on TripAdvisor. The results reveal that travelers value a sightseeing experience less if a previous attraction offered the same type of experience. Furthermore, active-participation attractions are more highly rated when visited after passive-participation ones. Similarly, travelers rate attractions providing absorption more positively after they have visited immersion ones. The findings are explained by using various tourism fatigue dimensions: affective fatigue, motivational fatigue, and cognitive fatigue. The study shows that sequence effects play an important role in helping to prevent tourism fatigue and increase tourism satisfaction, both of which have practical implications for tourism marketers' planning strategy. • Marketers' focus should shift from promoting destinations to creating experiences. • The work identifies psychological sequence effects of tourist experiences. • Insights base on two complementary theories: experience economy & fatigue research. • Big data with 33,350 traveler reviews on 525 attractions confirm sequence effects. • Researcher can design trip sequences to prevent fatigue and increase satisfaction.