Introduction
Positive, enriching and rewarding leisure experiences are essential aspects of life and the role that leisure plays within health, the environment, culture, education, urban and rural generation and personal development is well established.
(ILAM, 1999, p. 3) More and more, today’s consumers want their goods and services to be packaged as part of a memorable experience.
(Ford and Heaton, 2000) It has been argued that holidays represent important positive experiences for people.
(Ryan, 1997) [Leisure activities] can help to increase the self-esteem of individuals; build community spirit; increase social interaction; improve health and fitness; create employment and give people a purposeful activity; reducing the temptation to anti-social behaviour.
(Coalter, 2002, p. 42) Chapter 1 suggests that an important factor in the management of service quality in the leisure and tourism industry is the nature of the product and service. The product and service, as examined in Chapter 7, have a number of characteristics that impact on the management of quality. The management of quality becomes especially important given the significance of aspects of leisure participation suggested by the quotations at the beginning of this chapter. Chapters 1 and
7 highlight the mix of physical attributes of tangible elements of the product, especially the activity, and the process the customer goes through to engage with them. This book adopts the premise, highlighted in the ILAM (1999) declaration above, that there is an additional dimension to the leisure and tourism product, the consumer experience, and this is the focus of this chapter. We established that the product, seen as an activity and/or a setting, together with the way in which it is managed or delivered, creates and shapes the distinctive feature of leisure and tourism – the customer experience. The purpose of this chapter is to extend the analysis of the product into its experiential properties and to consider the implications for the management of service quality.
©CABInternational2003.Service Quality in Leisure and Tourism
68 (C. Williams and J. Buswell)
On completion of this chapter it is expected that you will be able to:
•
appreciate the experiential properties of the leisure and tourism product;•
understand the importance and meaning of the leisure and tourism experience to the consumer;•
examine the relationship between the leisure and tourism experience and the management of service quality;•
consider how certain approaches to service quality can enhance the leisure and tourism experience.The Growing Importance of the Leisure and Tourism Experience
The management of the leisure and tourism experience, with implications for service quality, is assuming greater significance as the industry is growing in size, sophistication and complexity. The industry is more global, more specialist, more competitive and more professional. The industry has a diverse range of organizations and contexts and its product development is becoming more commodified and based on a multifaceted experience. The relationship between the industry and an increasingly differentiated and demanding market is more significant.
Greater importance is attached to consumer behaviour, customer expectations and per- ceptions, the product/service mix, tech- nology multimedia and customer motives, satisfactions and benefits. Consumers are discerning and demanding and increasingly view leisure and tourism as more than a product or service. As the Henley Centre pointed out in two different reports: ‘. . . increasingly who you are matters less than how you feel at the point of consumption’
(Henley Centre, 1996, p. 2) and: ‘increasingly, we are buying experiences rather than goods’
(Waterhouse, 2000).
A similar approach is evident in the mission statements of leisure and tourism organizations. For example:
Together we will create even better experi- ences for our guests by offering authentic American food and drink with a memorable range of things to enjoy, wrapped up in A+
service, seasoned with fun.
(TGI Fridays) Our mission is to deliver excellent value by achieving a unique breadth of hospitality, leisure, and drinks businesses, which bring increasing numbers of people together across the world to share great leisure moments.
(Bass) The challenge, therefore, for leisure and tourism professionals in the management of the quality of the leisure and tourism product would appear to lie in their understanding of its experiential properties and features.
The overwhelming evidence from studies of
the leisure and tourism experience is that its meaning in many managed contexts is shaped by a myriad of complex perceptual constructs and this explains why it is regarded as a multidimensional phenomenon (Tinsley and Tinsley, 1986; Gunter, 1987; Russell and Hultsman, 1987; Howe and Rancourt, 1990;
Cooperet al., 1994; Leeet al., 1994; Hullet al., 1996; Ryan, 1997).
Yet the experiential aspects of leisure and tourism have not always been fully taken into account by the industry. It seemed that much of the leisure industry in the UKwas product related; it thought in terms of activities, facilities, programmes and other tangibles (Haywood and Henry, 1986) and was, arguably, more concerned with recreation than with leisure. It was a characteristic of the public sector during the explosion of new facilities in the 1970s. The Wolfenden Report in 1960 (CCPR, 1960) concluded that much of the problem of the UK’s low rates of participa- tion in sport and recreation would be solved by the provision of additional facilities.
Developments in quality assurance also appeared to adopt a rather mechanistic approach. In 1987 we saw the adaptation of the standard for quality management systems, BS 5750 part 2 (now ISO 9002), for the service sector including leisure. Swindon Oasis was the first leisure facility to be registered in 1990 to a standard that was still written in manufacturing terminology. The accreditation body, British Standards Insti- tute, found itself in new territory, and some difficulty, in applying the standard and the quality system to a consumer process with a diverse range of individual benefits and satis- factions, rather than to a conventional product with a clear specification. Chapter 11 demon- strates how the standard has been developed and implemented since then although it often appears to have been used in a mechanistic and essentially systems-based way. Likewise, the crown and stars system of classifying a range of hotels and leisure complexes by the tourist boards and other organizations is essentially concerned with tangibles – amenities, facilities and services. The ‘mystery guest’ methods employed by, for example, First Leisure and Whitbread are also more concerned with the physical and procedural
dimensions of the consumer process. Even
‘Best Value’ in local government in the UK with its emphasis on consultation with stake- holders would seem to be encouraging the use of quantitative performance indicators and the neglect of tracking the perceptions of customers at the point of service delivery (Sanderson, 1998; Davies, 1999).
We would contend that an understand- ing of the nature of the leisure and tourism experience should be of importance to the leisure and tourism professional, whether in the public, voluntary or commercial sectors, and that this also includes its meaning to the individual customer. The leisure and tourism manager’s skill lies in the ability to analyse and interpret the meaning attached by people to the events and phenomena taking place, for the study of leisure and tourism management involves complex perceptual constructs and relationships in many contexts. For example, the National Trust, in their National Strategic Plan 1998–2001, is committed to raising its standards of management and its ability to meet customer needs: ‘By 2001 all properties will have produced Statements of Significance summarising their meaning for people and their relationship to the wider landscape’
(National Trust, 1998).
The marketing of Gloucester Docks (Gloucester Docks Trading Company hand- book, 1999) also illustrates the point:
Probably the most important part of market- ing is to make sure that when visitors come their experience is even better than they had imagined. Then they will tell family and friends and come back themselves. This experience includes how safe the visitors feel, how welcome they feel and the appearance of the site – not just the quality of the attractions and shop.
The example from Gloucester Docks illustrates the need to consider customer feelings and sentiments. As the Henley Centre (1997, p. 49) suggested, ‘Going to the cinema has become more than just watching a movie – it is now an experience in itself.’
Therefore, the perceptions of consumers, their levels of satisfaction and the meanings they ascribe to leisure activities, and the impact of management processes upon their
perceptions require description of leisure and tourism experiences, firstly, followed by explanation and interpretation of their meanings (Hultsman and Anderson, 1991).
This can apply to the management of people in the least structured context (e.g. a national park) as well as more directly managed con- texts, such as leisure centres and theme parks.
It can apply to superficial, commodified and passive activities or more creative, skilled and challenging activities.
An example is the 3 days of frantic race-going during the Cheltenham Gold Cup week every March when thousands of punters are squeezed together in very cramped condi- tions with very long queues, both inside and outside the course, at every stage of the pro- cess; they respond to market research that they are having a wonderful time although have difficulty explaining why (Oxford Part- nership, 1996). As shown in Chapter 7, a num- ber of elements contribute to the outcomes of many transactions, especially the service encounter, although the experiential nature of some transactions will be less apparent.
For example, travel agents and tourism information services are more concerned with deferred outcomes and experiences, although the quality of the service is crucial to overall satisfaction, and in some instances the experi- ences of others may be a factor, as the Glouces- ter Docks Trading Company suggests in its office guidelines: ‘A visit to the docks can be made or marred by the courtesy and help- fulness all staff show, whether the visitors experience it themselves or witness the way others are treated.’
Thus, the essence of managing service quality in most leisure and tourism organiza- tions would seem to lie in the relationship between the consumer and the managed con- texts or environments in which the consumer experience occurs and the patterns or themes of this relationship. All of these contexts, of course, contain a myriad of individual experi- ences, whether rich and fulfilling or superfi- cial and mere entertainment, and raise many questions about the managed processes and the interaction between the consumer and the leisure environment and leisure provider. The pivotal component is the product or experi- ence, and the way in which it is managed and
delivered, and the recent developments in generic service quality literature underpin this.
Increasingly, the customer is viewed as both consumer and co-producer (Normann, 1991) and often plays an interactive role in shaping the experience; the leisure and tourism experi- ence can be perceived as a service process containing a service encounter or a series of sequential encounters, symbolized by the term ‘moments of truth’ (Carlzon, 1987).
The service encounter can be defined as the stage of the service process when the consumer engages or interacts with staff (the psychological service encounter) but also systems, procedures, information or even the organizational culture (see Chapter 14). The service encounter, as Fig. 6.1 demonstrates, can involve outcomes and therefore satisfac- tion or dissatisfaction supported by a post- transaction evaluation by the customer of the service performance. A central thrust of this chapter, and indeed this book, is that the level of satisfaction with a transaction represents more than the organization getting things right. As will be examined, the encounter and its evaluation are also affected by the experi- ential properties of the product or service.
The Experiential Properties of the Leisure and Tourism Product Leisure theorists (Tinsley and Tinsley, 1986;
Hullet al., 1996) have suggested that experi-
ential qualities define what is and what is not leisure. Leisure and tourism managers, of course, are in the business of trying to pro- vide diverse and high quality experiences.
Others (Hultsman and Anderson, 1991) observed that leisure research tends to research not leisure per se but its mani- festations, such as participation patterns, motivations and preferences. An example is provided by Nash’s conceptualization of leisure (Fig. 6.2), which offers a hierarchical view of the use of leisure but regards emo- tional participation as a discrete element.
There is a need for a greater understand- ing of the leisure experience and its meaning and how it relates to the management of the contexts in which it takes place. Indeed, providers are beginning to build in such perceptions consciously, as the following example suggests:
Our business is about delivering excitement to our customers. Every experience is built on organisation, anticipation, innovation and assurance. It is this combination that success- fully delivers the Wembley experience.
(Wembley plcAnnual report and accounts1998) A second consideration is the timescale involved in certain activities, particularly holidays, and the impact it can sometimes have on how the experience is evaluated.
Chapter 1 suggested that tourism was essentially concerned with certain leisure activities, albeit in a distinctive context. The
Provider resources
Customer motives and expectations Interaction
Service encounter
Performance Experience
Level of satisfaction Input
Process
Outputs
Fig. 6.1. The service encounter.
task of this chapter is to examine the range of experiences and motivations for con- sumption in different contexts, including everyday activities in the home locality and foreign travel and cultures.
In order to do this it might be argued that there is one major significant feature of tourism, and that is the timescale involved.
By definition, tourism occurs over a longer time span than conventional leisure activities;
although a holiday is made up of a series of discrete leisure activities, it is also evaluated by the tourist as an overall experience or as one package. However, it could also be argued that many leisure experiences are made up of several elements or stages, which affect the final perception of the activity and its management. This begins to lead into the domain of not simply customer satisfaction management but also zones of tolerance and the nuances of satisfiers and dissatisfiers (see Chapter 13), which reveal that a customer’s post-experience evaluation is not always as straightforward as it sometimes seems. There are a number of aspects in the study of the leisure and tourism experience to highlight, which can be synthesized with the theories and concepts of service management to enable more informed management of service qual- ity in leisure and tourism.
Motives/preconditions
Figure 6.3 builds on the previous model and focuses on the nature of the leisure and tour- ism experience. It considers the conditions necessary for the attainment of leisure and the generic motives of consumers in engaging in leisure and tourism activities. Much evidence suggests that the prerequisites for achieving leisure are a sense of freedom of choice, freedom from evaluation and intrinsic motivation or the expectations of preferred experiences. It could be argued that all positive experiences will contain enjoyment and then will range from a level of relaxation to fun, entertainment, excitement and adven- ture or escapism, apart from the specific motives of, for example, health and fitness, education or personal development. Which- ever applies to particular activities, the model points to the need for balance in the three key factors of time, flow and expression and emphasizes the dialectical nature of the leisure experience.
Time
Free time is integral to leisure and tourism but the requirement here is the balance Creative
participation
Active participation
Emotional participation Entertainment/amusement
Killing time Injury or detriment to self Acts performed against society
Antidote in boredom A person moved in appreciation Copying the model – playing the part
E.g. inventor, painter, composer
Excess Deviant
Fig. 6.2. Nash’s conceptualization of human use of leisure time. (Source: Nash, 1960, cited in Torkildsen, 1986.)
between the purposeful use of time and a sense of timelessness. We have observed that it is important to distinguish between the characteristics of the leisure and tourism experience and the determinants or causal factors of that experience and to move beyond viewing leisure and tourism as merely residual time or an activity. Some leisure theorists (Leeet al., 1994; Hull et al., 1996) have demonstrated how the view of leisure changed from one of simply time away from work to perceived freedom, and then to a focus on the psychological attributes (motives and benefits) and the perceptual dimensions of leisure. Others (Ryan, 1997;
Holloway, 1998), from a tourism perspective, also identified time or the sense of timeless- ness to be an essential ingredient to a holiday.
Quality service delivery involves creating the appropriate conditions for the particular needs or motives of individual customers and perceiving time in a qualitative way. Ryan (1997) showed how holidays are a temporal experience in that they can include: (i) free- dom from constraint by the perceived or actual lack of time; (ii) the passing of time (holidays have a chronological sequence); (iii) an experience of time in that, even for some intensive events or activities, time can appear to slow down; and (iv) possessing temporal boundaries beyond the holiday itself with all the stages including anticipation, recall and travel.
Therefore, the notion of time as a social construct in addition to a chronological sequence is relevant to the analysis of service
quality and highlights the pivotal role of some professionals in enhancing the quality of the experience. The travel agent can help to shape the planning of time as well as the memories associated with its use; the airline, through its delayed flight, can have a deleterious effect;
the tour operator, through schedules, mix of activities and the interaction with holiday- makers, can also contribute greatly to the temporal experience. In a different context, one of the authors was involved in some research in the 1980s with a leisure centre that was experiencing some dissatisfaction with its bowls users, most of whom were senior citizens with time-rich, cash-poor lifestyles.
The centre was in the middle of the town and was built over a car park that was also used by many shoppers. Everybody paid the normal parking rates, which were in time bands and became quite expensive after a certain period of time. Unfortunately, at that time the centre’s users did not have their parking fee refunded, which meant that the bowls players, in an activity and at a stage of life when time should not matter, were constantly looking at the clock. The sense of timelessness, which occurs with the best leisure and tourism activities, was not present and the overall experience was impaired. After the recom- mendation to refund the parking fee to users was accepted, usage, income and customer satisfaction were all improved.
Thus, it is possible to move beyond the uncomplicated notion of leisure as simply free time, which can often be regarded as what something is not, rather than what it Achieving balance in
In the appropriate
To maximize
Motives
Flow
Context
Benefits
Time Expression
Fig. 6.3. The dialectic nature of the leisure and tourism experience.