Class Designing and Structuring Tourism Experiences

The aim of this curriculum unit is to enable students to understand the principles of designing and structuring innovative and memorable tourism experiences. Students will learn to combine cultural, social, environmental and economic elements to create authentic experiences that meet the needs and expectations of tourists.

Being a Curricular Unit of great interaction and development of individual and group critical and creative capacity, it is intended to foster an enabling environment for students to be able to analyse, create and structure unique, attractive and aligned tourism experiences with the needs of the current and future market as well as tourists in multicultural environments.

1 - Introduction to the Tourism Experience
2 - Understanding the Traveller Profile
3 - Designing Tourism Experiences
4 - Storytelling and the Narrative of Experiences
5 - Tourist Route Design
6 - Online Experiences, Technology and Innovation, and Tourism 4.0
7 - Sustainability and Social Responsibility in Tourism
8 - The Role of Partnerships in Structuring Experiences
9 - Immersive and Thematic Experiences
10 - The Role of Gastronomy in Tourism Experiences
11 - Evaluation and Measurement of the Success of Tourism Experiences
12 - Adapting Experiences to International Audiences

In order to bring the learning methodologies closer to the current guidelines for student-centred teaching, the following actions will be applied:

It is intended to use Moodle to streamline the exchange of information gathered and the discussion between the groups on the topics under analysis that will be carried out in an environment external to the classroom environment. The use of this platform for these purposes corresponds to the A3ES guideline in order to stimulate and promote "learning communities in virtual environments" and "cooperative learning".

Interactive Exposure will be preferably applied, together with methods centred on Inquiry and Cooperation, promoting individual student participation and their integration in working and research groups. The already used Problem-Based Learning and Case Studies methods will be reinforced in the approach to the labour market, guided visits and practical classes, fulfilling the A3ES guideline "Learning in the Workspace".

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Hung, W. L., Lee, Y. J., & Huang, P. H. (2016). Creative experiences, memorability and revisit intention in creative tourism. Current Issues in Tourism, 19(8), 763-770.

Kim, J. H., Ritchie, J. B., & McCormick, B. (2012). Development of a scale to measure memorable tourism experiences. Journal of Travel research, 51(1), 12-25.

Noivo, M. A., Lopes Dias, Á., & Jiménez-Caballero, J. L. (2022). Connecting the dots between battlefield tourism and creative tourism: the case of the Peninsular War in Portugal. Journal of Heritage Tourism, 17(6), 648-668.

Seyfi, S., Hall, C. M., & Rasoolimanesh, S. M. (2020). Exploring memorable cultural tourism experiences. Journal of Heritage Tourism, 15(3), 341-357.

Tan, S. K., Kung, S. F., & Luh, D. B. (2013). A model of ‘creative experience’in creative tourism. Annals of tourism research, 41, 153-174.