Keywords

1 Introduction

In Schumpeter’s (1947) view innovation, defined as “[…] the doing of new things or the doing of things that are already being done in a new way […]” (p. 151), creates something new, while destroying something old. This process of creative destruction is at the heart of economic development and challenges entrepreneurs, governments and the public alike. Within the context of tourism decision makers are continuously developing their destination to retain current and attract new visitors. Doing so requires a continuous adaptation to trends and changes that shape the travel experience. Over the past decade practitioners and academics alike identified the need to incorporate experience design aspects into the destination development process to create offerings that by themselves or in conjunction with others create memorable positive experiences (Dong and Siu 2013; Tussyadiah 2014).

Leonard and Rayport (1997) argue that innovations thoughtful of design are sought after by consumers. In service literature, where consumers play an integral part in service production, it was found that including consumers in the development process is beneficial to create new (Cruickshank 2010) and to improve existing services (Bate and Robert 2006). Tourism research focused on travel experiences that cater to the needs and wants of travelers and create long-lasting positive memories and excitement about the trip. Initial travel motivation studies identified tourism specific push and pull factors to provide an early understanding for the development of new tourism and hospitality services (Lambert and Watson 1984). More recently design thinking was applied to better understand emotional and sensory experiences at catered events (Pullman and Gross 2004), visits to theme parks (Dong and Siu 2013), and effect of technology, for example persuasiveness of websites (Kim and Fesenmaier 2008), and value added of navigational tools (Tussyadiah and Zach 2012). This suggests that tourism innovation benefits from design thinking to create meaningful experiences.

To better understand tourism innovation from an experience design perspective this chapter reviews popular tourism innovation typologies. Typologies enable us to provide a framework to bridge the lack of adequate theoretical and empirical analyses (Hipp and Grupp 2005). Common innovation types are evaluated using design thinking to identify opportunities to create experiences for travelers. This bisection of innovation and design is an experience driven understanding of tourism innovation and provides a template to develop innovations that contribute to business performance through customer centric experiences rather than administrative or technological innovation that put organizational aspects first. The goal of this chapter is to develop a model that integrates the compartmentalized view on innovation with experience design thinking to develop new or contribute to existing products and services to increase visitor experiences. However, it is beyond the scope of this chapter to develop performance indicators that measure the magnitude of an innovation or its newness. Rather, the goal of this chapter is to understand and map contributions of innovation to experiences. However, future studies to quantify the effect are encouraged. Specifically, we discuss innovation in tourism (Sect. 2) and popular types of tourism innovation (Sect. 3) followed by experience design aspects of tourism innovation (Sect. 4). Next we apply design elements to innovation types (Sect. 5) and provide conclusions and suggestion for future research.

2 Innovation Development and Adoption in Tourism

The travel experience consists of a wide range of services offered by multiple providers tourists interact with from the planning phase to onsite visits and post-visitation reviews. In response to changes in consumer and travel behavior providers are required to adapt and to stay relevant in the market place. The demand-driven nature of tourism forces providers to innovate by adding and improving tourism offerings at the destination (Brooker and Joppe 2014; Hjalager 2002) and at the firm level (Pikkemaat and Peters 2005). The importance of this innovation activity is generally recognized and viewed as a critical success factor. Defining innovation, however, is a challenge. Following Hjalager (2010) this chapter adopts Schumpeter’s (1947) definition of innovation as “[…] new things or the doing of things that are already being done in a new way […]” (p. 151). Schumpeter’s distinction between the entrepreneur who implements and adopts an innovation and “[…] gets things done […]” (p. 152) versus the inventor who produces ideas suggests that innovation is new to the entrepreneur, but not necessarily new to the market. Innovation, thus, can be something new regardless of originating from within or outside the firm (Woodman et al. 1993). Indeed, it is rare that tourism organizations are inventors of breakthrough innovations; they are rather adopters of innovations from other areas (Hjalager 2002; Volo 2005). As such, this chapter defines innovation as something new to an organization or an organization’s new way of doing something already existing. This definition steers clear of the discussion on the degree of newness or novelty, thus allowing to focus on new products and services that challenge organization resources and competencies (Menor et al. 2002).

While originating in manufacturing the Schumpeterian perspective of innovation has been widely adopted in service (e.g. Barras 1986; Drejer 2004) and tourism research (Hjalager 2010; Jacob et al. 2003; Peters and Pikkemaat 2005; Volo 2005). Innovation and its importance for tourism development have been studied to define tourism innovation (Hjalager 1997, 2010), to develop policies that support innovative and forward looking tourism development (Dredge 2006), to measure tourism innovation itself and its outcomes (Krizaj et al. 2014; Peters and Pikkemaat 2005; Volo 2006), to understand the effect of information technology (Zach et al. 2010), to highlight the role of innovation for sustainable development (Moscardo 2008) and to understand the role of collaboration (e.g. Nordin 2003; Zach 2012). More importantly this increased attention on innovation in tourism and the rise of the service economy drew attention from supranational organizations to measure service innovation (OECD Eurostat 2005) and to include the term innovation in the official thesaurus of tourism and leisure activities (UNTWO 2001).

Innovation is an ongoing process that spans from the initial idea or the identification of an invention to its successful implementation (Alam and Perry 2002). This process typically encompasses a series of programmed and consecutive necessary steps also known as new service development (Edvardsson and Olsson 1996). It enables organizations to develop or adopt tourism service innovations that best fit the service delivery process and the resulting design of the new service in a timely manner (Ottenbacher et al. 2005; Tajeddini 2011). Recent tourism studies pay particular attention to the design of new services in an effort to create quality experiences which are seen as the core of travel (Dong and Siu 2013; Tussyadiah 2014). The importance of providing meaningful services that create value for consumers has been identified in Pine and Gilmore’s (1998) experience economy. To emphasize the attention on experiences Sundbo and Hagedorn-Rasmussen (2008) refer to tourism as an experience production system. Consumers expect tourism services to be aligned with each other and to contribute to the overall destination experience. Therefore the design of new services becomes a critical aspect in a development process aiming at experience-centric services. Evaluating tourism and hospitality offerings from an experience design perspective provides an opportunity to identify where and how value is created for visitors (e.g. Pullman and Gross 2004; Zomerdijk and Voss 2010). Tourism innovation, thus, needs to incorporate an experience design view to provide new or add to existing tourism services and products that create value for travelers. The increased interest by practitioners and academics in the development of new tourism services powered by experience-design warrants an evaluation of popular innovation types as a guide for future innovation development.

3 Types of Tourism Innovation

To better understand innovation tourism and hospitality research identified several types. Hjalager (1997) developed a set of five innovation types and refined them in a later paper (Hjalager 2010). Her types were successfully applied to understand internationalization in tourism (Williams and Shaw 2011) and to measure innovation (Camisón and Monfort-Mir 2011). Hjalager’s (1997) initial paper evaluates innovation and tourism development through the lens of agents in tourism and leisure (i.e. tourism service providers and other stakeholders) that seek to improve their economic situation. In particular changes regarding sustainable tourism and resulting tourism innovations were evaluated and arranged in five innovation types. Extending the scope beyond sustainability to evaluate innovations in various areas of tourism and hospitality Hjalager (2010) build upon the 1997 paper to update and better ground the five innovation types. The studies employ a technological view of innovation as put forward by Dosi (1982) and a traditional Schumpeterian definition of innovation that distinguishes between inventions and innovation in that the latter is the adoption of the former with the goal to result in commercial success. For tourism Hjalager argues that inventions stem from suppliers and other fields and are adopted by the agents.

This chapter uses tourism innovation types as defined by Hjalager (2010) and Jacob et al. (2003) to provide a comprehensive list of innovation types that can contribute to customer experiences. Hjalager’s (2010) paper is our starting point: first, product or service innovations include innovations consumers can immediately observe and identify as new such as hotel concepts (e.g. true budget or design hotels), heritage driven experiences and manmade attractions as well as a new, creative bundling of tourism products and services to respond to consumer interests (e.g. medical tourism). While tangible artifacts are critical to the production of tourism services it is useful to treat them as two separate types; as products (e.g. hotel’s exterior gardens) and as services (e.g. check-in). It is argued that products often contribute to the tourism infrastructure upon which services are built. As such, services are activities that tourists co-create utilizing products and staff. Second, process innovations contribute to operational success through lower cost, higher efficiency or effectiveness. These are possible through the adoption of technology (e.g. food processing, low flow water filters) whereby information technology plays a key role for tourism (e.g. destination website). Importantly, Hjalager (2010) points out that technology is often used to increase efficiency, but has little consideration for customer experiences. Third, managerial innovations are mostly internal to retain staff (e.g. incentive pay, training, career planning) and achieve buy-in from volunteers, but also includes onsets of customer co-creation. Fourth, management innovations refer to outcomes of marketing concepts resulting in new ways of communication and establishing relationships for example through loyalty programs or online travel agencies. Furthermore, Hjalager (2010) refers to these changes as marketing innovations suggesting a focus on production, organizational structure and administrative processes as suggested by Han et al. (1998). However, a more appropriate interpretation of marketing innovations is that they lead to new communications and relationships as they create value by bundling new and current products, services and delivery. Information technology development such as the internet and resulting changes in consumer behavior and cobranding opportunities, as mentioned by Hjalager, too are such value creating marketing innovations. Last, institutional innovations are changes to environmental structures such as business networks and resulting new relationships or power changes within existing ones (e.g. booking websites) as well as legal frameworks (e.g. franchising regulation or labels/certificates).

Jacob et al. (2003), while not explicitly building upon Hjalager rely on mostly the same categories and similar definitions. However, there are two substantial differences between Hjalager (2010) and Jacob et al. (2003). First, the latter does not include institutional changes. However, from a tourism perspective, and as argued by Hjalager (2010), changes and developments in habits and traditions, both by individuals and organization, can be leveraged by tourism organizations in their pursuit of organizational success. Second, Jacob et al. (2003) include market innovation as a type of innovation that refers to organizations expanding market segments or entering a new market space. Following the above definition of innovation as a new thing as perceived by the introducing organization, market innovation is relevant from the point of few of an organization entering a new geographical area, pursuing a new market segment. For tourism destinations, this also includes the entrance of new business types (e.g. peer-to-peer accommodation) which add value to the destination, whereas an existing business views such an entrant as additional competition. Table 1 provides an overview on discussed innovation types and types used in this chapter.

Table 1 Tourism innovation types and definition
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4 Experience Design-Driven Tourism Innovation

Creating memorable experiences is a cornerstone of tourism since the first grand-tours in the seventeenth century. Much of the key elements of travel have not changed and are still prevalent today as tourists plan, travel, remember and share their travels. Experiences are uniquely created from sensory and psychological experiences. Indeed, Helkkula et al. (2012) argue that service experiences are ongoing, circular, iterative and individual to each customer. Tourism firms increasingly manage the travel experience at various stages; for example when searching for information online (Kim and Fesenmaier 2008) or visiting a man-made destination like a theme parks (Zomerdijk and Voss 2010). This requires service systems to contain functional, mechanical and human cues (Berry et al. 2006).

Travel experiences are a collection of multiple interactions with service providers that are evaluated holistically by tourists (Dong and Siu 2013). As such the romance of travel happens on the backdrop of commercial business decisions to generate a profit. Business considerations often focus on the effective and efficient delivery of services for business success (e.g. move the tourists from point A to point B) without much consideration for tourists’ experiences. Somewhere along the tourism businesses’ evolution it appears that decision makers were not able to see the proverbial experience trees in the tourism forest anymore. For example, Prentice et al. (1998) emphasized the need to shift from an activity-based management focus back to experience-based management. This chapter follows this argument and builds on tourism research that supports design thinking and design philosophy to holistically understand travel experiences. Design philosophy goes beyond technical considerations and includes tourists’ desire of higher aesthetic and cognitive experiences of the world around them, orchestrated as much as possible with straightforwardness and comfort (Helkkula et al. 2012; Tussyadiah 2014).

4.1 Innovation Along Touch Points

A successful approach to implement experience design, especially in the tourism industry is to follow a roadmap, the so called customer journey, to evaluate the travel experience holistically. Understanding customers’ steps to achieve a desired outcome enables providers to fully understand individual interactions (touch points) and their contribution to the overall travel experience (Tax et al. 2013; Zomerdijk and Voss 2010). This makes each touch point essential to the development and design process. Evaluating touch points in chronological order makes the tourist the center of the analysis as a resource integrator, rather than an individual service provider (Lusch and Vargo 2006; Tax et al. 2013). Tourism providers can play three different roles (Tax et al. 2013): they can be an isolated part of the overall service delivery network, they may be subcontractors for a coordinator of such a network, or they can take the initiative in all or most of the touch points as the coordinators of the overall travel experience (which usually stretches over the borders of more than one tourism service provider on a tourist destination).

The critical role of front-line employees in providing travel experiences resulted in the development of the employee journey by Gruber et al. (2015). Satisfactory experiences are not possible if the employees do not know, practice and send signals of quality to travelers (Ottenbacher and Gnoth 2005). From a design thinking perspective the customer journey is an experience-based advancement of activity-based management while the employee journey adds employee satisfaction and self-development to process workflow management (Prentice et al. 1998; Gruber et al. 2015). The importance of design elements as part of the travel experience suggests that researchers and practitioners need to implement them in the development of travel experiences. It is argued that design elements contributing directly and indirectly (through employees and physical aspects) should be considered in the tourism innovation process.

At the example of a customer journey for a core tourism service, the lodging experience, we are analyzing connections between design-driven experiences and tourism innovation. Some or all relevant touch points in the customer journey were useful stepping stones in studies applying design analysis (Teixeira et al. 2012) and road maps (Johnston and Kong 2011). Focusing only on the lodging experience reduces the complexity of the overall travel experience in a destination and increases the clarity of the connections. However, since the customer journey is consumer-centric it does not go beyond front-office interactions to back-office operations. Indeed, Bitner et al. (2008) suggested the service blueprint as a vehicle to identify customer relationships with the organization, but also organizational elements such as physical elements and operational stages visible and invisible to the customer. As the customer moves along her journey each touch point adding to the overall experience is affected by one or more processes, tangible and intangible artifacts. Key touch points in a lodging guests’ journey are pre-arrival activities (e.g. search, booking), arrival, stay, departure and post-departure (e.g. review and word of mouth). Table 2 shows the above identified innovation types to lodging touch points. Brief descriptions linking operational understanding of innovation and design thinking are provided. It is important to note that not every innovation will contribute to each stage in the customer journey.

Table 2 Examples for innovation types by touch points for lodging guests
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For each touch point service providers need to evaluate if an innovation contributes to organizational success either directly (e.g. through cost reductions) or indirectly (e.g. through customer satisfaction that results in re-visitation or recommendation). Johnston and Kong (2011) argue that value is created if design elements contribute to tourists' experiences, reduce cost, increase efficiency gains and result in staff satisfaction. The inclusion of experience design in the tourism innovation process enables the development and adoption of offerings that contribute to all or some of these values.

4.2 Innovation and Design Thinking

In designing and managing services providers need to consider the physical context of the new thing such an atmosphere with cues that promote service quality (Berry et al. 2006) and the relational context like the interaction with service staff and other guests (Bitner et al. 2008; Gruber et al. 2015). Pullman and Gross (2004) evaluated hospitality services in a VIP tent and argue that design experiences need to be considered to create value for the organization; specifically meaningful emotional responses (direct value) and loyalty (indirect value). According to Zomerdijk and Voss (2010) value creation takes place along six contextual areas with these design elements:

  1. 1.

    Series of cues are signposts reflected by products, services and the environment, which lead tourist on the road between the distinct touch points. With their help the tourist service is performed effortlessly, seemingly spontaneous and hassle free.

  2. 2.

    Sensory design focuses on tourist’s perception of tourism services past its five basic senses. Clever communication through all five channels can result in more intensive and immersive travel experience.

  3. 3.

    Front-line engagement stresses the importance of staff in direct contact with tourists and staffs’ professional convergence with tourists that may affect desired responses and experience.

  4. 4.

    Dramatic structure of events is a continuation of the logic of series of cues usage. In the latter, the travel experience is influenced through carefully designed cues lead. In the former, the influencing role is achieved through symbolic meanings composed in a solid and compelling story, and its appropriate dramatic structure.

  5. 5.

    The presence of fellow customers, apart from cues and front-line personnel, represent the third group of people who co-experience the observed tourist’s service and may affect the experiences of each other. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on other tourists that come before and after the current tourist and which together form a group of individuals that interact with each other with their emotions and responses.

  6. 6.

    Back/front-stage coupling is focusing on staff, which is chiefly responsible for increased efficiency and productivity. However, as the theater backstage workers also co-create the show, this also applies to tourism where back-stage staff have to be in constant connection with the developments on the tourism stage, so they too can contribute to the overall tourist’s experience.

The above examples for innovation types are evaluated through the lens of these design elements. Table 3 provides possible aspects design thinking can contribute to the innovation development process. As such, the operational understanding of innovation is broken down by design aspects that can affect multiple touch points, rather than by a procedural (chronological) view, to contribute to tourism experiences. This provides a holistic evaluation of tourism experiences using multiple design elements that can be included in the innovation process to create new or improved travel experiences.

Table 3 Examples for the effect of design thinking (by design element) on guest experiences for identified innovation types
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4.3 EDIT: Experiences Through Design, Innovation and Touch Points

To fully understand the potential of innovation to add to travel experiences it is argued that a three dimensional new service development space enables decision makers and researchers to focus on the nature of each touch point and how to improve experiences at each touch point with design elements. As such, this three dimensional experience space consists along the axes of design, innovation and touch points and represents the relationship between these three basic elements of travel experiences. The EDIT model disrupts a static operational approach to innovation along touch points and provides a guide to improve experiences by aligning multiple moving parts. As such, the model provides a holistic, 360° view into all possible areas of tourism supply innovation. Most importantly, the new service development process creates experiences regardless of the initial dimension considered by the organization as long as the other dimensions are integrated as well.

For instance, lodging properties planning changes to their hotel lobby (product innovation) need to consider six design elements that span three touch points. In other words, these are 18 ways of looking at guest experiences in the lobby (following Tables 2 and 3). At this point decision makers can focus on a design element that enhances the lobby across all three touch points. Alternatively, if a property seeks to improve the arrival experience it is provided with six design elements across six types of innovation (all but market innovation), resulting in 36 possibilities to improve the guest experience (following Tables 2 and 3). Focusing on one touch point (e.g. arrival) decision makers can incorporate multiple design elements in the lobby. Last, decision makers could seek to improve the management of fellow guests at all touch points and across all types of innovation (42 possibilities; following Tables 2 and 3). Focusing on the lobby area, all possible innovation types that can contribute need to be considered. Solutions to increase guest experiences in the lobby by better managing the presence of fellow guests at departure can include a designated drop off spot for luggage storage, a lounge to wait for the a shuttle bus or a designated taxi line (cordoned off). On the other hand, front-line staff can provide fast and accurate assistance in the booking process via chat when a loyal customer is logged into the booking system website. The proposed EDIT model, thus, enables decision makers to edit resources and assets along any of the three dimensions to contribute to guest experiences (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
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The EDIT model

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In addition to the flexibility of the point of entry to the new service development process, the EDIT model can also be adapted to specific needs of any tourism service provider. Indeed, the granularity of the three dimensions is variable. First, tourism product and service offerings drive the number of touch points. The number varies between organizations based on experience and strategic approach. Touch points can be added, removed or split further to even smaller building blocks. Next, the proposed basic innovation types can be additionally refined or merged to properly reflect the organization type. Last, design elements can be expanded depending as a result of current organizational settings and future market opportunities. In this chapter we argue that these elements explain in detail how tourists’ experiences are affected. However, design elements could also be used to explain experiences created for other stakeholders. For example, while Zomerdijk and Voss (2010) focus on key areas for design of new customer experiences, Gruber et al. (2015) aim for the six design elements for the new workplace staff experience. Throughout the tourism system, in addition to tourists and staff, there are also local residents and organizations, business partners, the natural environment. All of which could also be analyzed through their experience design elements affecting and being affected by the customer journey perspective. As such, the EDIT model is both sturdy and versatile. It can be adapted for the needs of the organization and be refined to the organization’s level of innovation experience and capacity in new service development to guide a holistic new service development process for sustainable success.

5 Concluding Remarks

This chapter explores and establishes connections between tourism innovation and design thinking. While these two concepts are closely related their respective approaches to the development of new services are to some extent incompatible. Innovation is typically seen as technical or administrative advances that are integrated in current or result in new services, often driven through research and development by suppliers to tourism service providers. Hence, the invention comes first, market research identifies possible uses in the market place and new services are developed (Hjalager 1997). Design thinking, on the other hand puts the customer experiences first and seeks solutions that enhance experiences or address changes in the market place (Tussyadiah 2014). The goal was to develop a model that combines these schools of thought to provide a framework for future studies and as a guideline for practitioners.

The proposed EDIT model provides two substantial contributions to tourism research. First, it integrates traditional innovation approaches through various innovation types, follows tourists’ path through their experience along touch points, thus centering service provision on the consumer rather than the provider, and emphasizes this consumer-centric perspective through design elements. This provides a holistic approach to new or improved tourism services regardless of the starting point. Second, while the model identified key characteristics for each of the three model dimensions it is also flexible enough to be applied for various types of organizations in various stages of their development and with varying degrees of new service development capabilities. This allows tourism researchers to refine the model and to identify the optimal degree of granularity for each dimension based on study context. Third, this chapter answers calls to better understand design thinking for tourism development (Dong and Siu 2013; Dredge 1999; Tussyadiah 2014). Furthermore, this model is also useful for practitioners. Tourism service providers can use this model as a guide to the development of new tourism offerings. By thinking along all three dimensions at onces elements critical to memorable travel experiences should become obvious and can as such be integrated in to the development process. This enables practitioners to develop experiences along a certain (edited) storyline.

There are, however, limitations that should be addressed in future research. The model was applied to the lodging experience. As such, a model reflecting experiences sought after by other or multiple stakeholders at once could bridge the gap between experience design thinking and operational and technical processes even more. This model also bypassed the discussion of measuring innovation in favor of the contribution innovation can have for an organization. While innovation count models exist (e.g. Pikkemaat and Peters 2005) this model can be a starting point to understand the value design innovation can create for an organization. As such, this chapter provides a vital first step for design-driven innovation, but it is necessary to understand value creation from the point of view of various stakeholders.