Prospection and tourism
Abstract
When making decisions about their future dream holidays, tourists often spend significant time thinking about future scenarios. This is an example of ‘mental time travel’, a process called prospection. The concept of prospection refers to human ability of ‘pre-experience’ the future and hence how that future ‘feels’, which is why it is sometimes called affective forecasting. There is a large volume of psychological research on prospection, but in applied fields, the use of various terms makes the current literature complex, disconnected and hard to navigate. This chapter provides an introduction to prospection as an underlying mechanism explaining some of the effects of experiential marketing. It discusses tourism prospection-related terms, errors of prospection and mental biases and ways to better manage tourist experiences.
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of Publication
6-24-2024
Volume
27
Publication Title
Tourism Social Science Series
Publisher
Emerald
School
School of Arts and Humanities
Copyright
Subsciption content
First Page
153
Last Page
161
Comments
Le, D. and Scott, N. (2024), "Prospection and Tourism", Cognitive Psychology and Tourism (Tourism Social Science Series, Vol. 27), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 153-161. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1571-504320240000027013