72 Sensoriality and Aesthetics in Tourism Through Marketing: The Essence of Experiences

Personal intentions and motivation

Since the beginning of my research career, the presence of female figures in my field, workplace, and research networks has been evident. From the team that supports and supervises me to my colleagues and students at various levels, the presence of women in the field of tourism—at least in Spain—is notable.

My concern with and interest in the gender knowledge have always been present. For my degree thesis, I conducted a study on the differences between men and women in tourism careers over time. While women’s representation in university-level tourism studies is high, this coherence does not extend to the private sector and professional development within the tourism industry. Fortunately, my personal experience and academic trajectory suggest that this trend does not apply to the field of tourism academic and research sector.

Before writing these words, I reflected on the impact that women have had on my academic development. It was not difficult to identify leading national and international scholars, nor was it difficult to find significant female authors cited in the reference lists of my thesis and academic publications.

As both a personal challenge and an opportunity to highlight the importance of these women in my career and in tourism research more broadly, this summary of my research lines and contributions in tourism will be based on references authored by women. I would like to stress that this has not been a difficult task, as there are many outstanding female scholars within my research field.

Theoretical framework

Tourism is defined as a personal, social, cultural, and economic phenomenon centred on travel and detachment from one’s usual environment (UN Tourism, 2008). Based on this definition, the nature and significance of tourism can be analysed from multiple perspectives. Mapping the tourist journey is one of the main goals of tourism research. This allows for the evaluation of touchpoints, characteristics, management strategies, and potential areas for improvement, in a process that evolves alongside the market and its emerging needs and demands.

Besides that, several scholars have noted the shift from an economy of tangible goods to one of memorable experiences, which in turn transforms the consumer’s role from passive to active. This is due to the nature of tourism services and the characteristics of the tourist as a consumer—who not only seeks leisure and hedonic outcomes, such as satisfaction, but also new experiences, learning, and eudaimonic outcomes associated with happiness and well-being, which contribute to personal growth and one’s conception of life (Pasaco-González et al., 2023; Skavronskaya et al., 2020). Thereby, in her theoretical review, Volo (2009) distinguishes between different stages of experience—links within the tourist journey—including the anticipated experience, the actual experience, supporting experiences, and peak experiences.

With the aim of enhancing and understanding this experience in the customer journey during the tourist enjoyment, various scholars have applied theories and behavioural models to explain how tourists evaluate their experiences. These are building on the concept of aesthetic experiences and drawing from environmental psychology. Volo (2009) proposed a model comprising three elements for assessing experience: sensation, perception, and interpretation. Krishna (2011) further suggested that this evaluative process could be enhanced through evocative and transformative techniques such as sensory marketing. Sensory marketing involves the use of stimuli from the five senses—sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste—to enable interaction through sensory engagement (Agapito, 2020).

Rooted in Aristotelian philosophy—which posits that humans perceive and understand the world through their senses, detect danger, and interact with their surroundings (Agapito et al., 2013)—this human evaluative process has been developed in tourism marketing via controlled techniques aimed at creating emotions and memories through sensory stimuli (Agapito, 2020). Contemporary trends highlight the importance of each sense and the necessity of aligning their application with clear objectives to enhance experiences without causing sensory overload (Krishna, 2012). In tourism research, sensory techniques have been applied in areas such as territorial assessment, destination promotion, and experience design (Agapito, 2020). For instance, specifically, visual, olfactory, and auditory elements serve as complementary tools that enrich the gastronomic tourism experience, triggering emotional responses that influence consumer behaviour (Madzharov, 2022).

The positive relationship between emotion, sensoriality, and experientiality in tourist evaluations is theoretically grounded in the proposition that emotions are key to well-being and memory formation (Vada et al., 2019; 2020). The incorporation of sensoriality—and its emotional, behavioural, and marketing implications—into tourism research has been widely explored, including in studies of online environments (Brandão, 2021), specific tourism typologies such as rural tourism (Kastenholz et al., 2018) and gastronomic tourism (Di-Clemente et al., 2020; Şahin & Kılıçlar, 2023), and in experience design through sensory tools (Dolnicar, 2020; Elvekrok & Gulbrandsøy, 2022; Loureiro et al., 2019).

This line of research, with a well-established foundation, remains highly relevant in light of current tourism trends, including immersive environments, online enjoyment technologies, and research methodologies grounded in psychology and perception (Correia et al., 2022; Orea-Giner et al., 2022).

Research focus and main results

Based on these theoretical premises, my research focuses on the emotional analysis of sensory marketing elements applied to tourist experiences (Moreno-Lobato et al., 2021). The aim is to create aesthetically pleasing, coherent and effective environments to enhance tourist experiences and improve their evaluation and recall.

In this regard, my research focuses on gastronomic tourism, which is largely sensory in nature (Moreno-Lobato et al., 2024). Within this field, I examine the impact of various sensory stimuli on the decision-making and memory processes of participants and tourists.

To this end, I conduct two types of study: 1) experimental studies evaluating the capacity for implicit emotional activation through isolated stimuli, such as sweating; and 2) studies of real experiences analysing the causal relationships between sensoriality, emotions, and marketing results.

The main results and interesting implications lead to a series of highly relevant conclusions for the business sector, destination managers, and tourists themselves. In terms of the emotional design of experiences in gastronomic tourism, the nature of the agri-food product is of great importance. If the product is strongly associated with a particular place or region, enhancing this authenticity with related stimuli can improve the experience (Moreno-Lobato et al., 2024a). However, despite the previously established theoretical foundations in marketing, consistency and congruence have been shown not to always lead to better results. This is because there are agri-food products, such as cheese, where pleasant smells generate better results than congruent ones due to the unpleasant nature of the latter (Moreno-Lobato et al., 2023).

Regarding the decision-making behaviour and memory of gastronomic tourists, this typology yields highly relevant and interesting results. It should be noted that the gastronomic experience has a tangible component: the gastronomic product itself (Moreno-Lobato et al., 2025). This product can generate marketing results such as customer loyalty, repeat custom and recommendations, both for the experience and the product. Our studies conclude that this process changes over time. While tourists tend to have better experiences immediately after the event, in the long term this trend is reversed, with greater relevance given to the tangible product, which is more easily applicable in everyday life (Moreno-Lobato et al., 2023; 2024a; 2024b). This is important because of the significance of the behavioural transformation following the tourist experience, which generates more connections between tourists and destinations over time, enhancing the memory (Moreno-Lobato et al., 2025).

It is crucial to evaluate tourist experiences comprehensively, employing various approaches and methodologies to grasp the intricate decision-making process (Moreno-Lobato et al., 2024b). Furthermore, the characteristics and unique features of different types of tourism can only be understood through a process of variable disaggregation, triangulation, and isolated variable evaluation. Future lines of research in gastronomic tourism and tourism marketing will focus primarily on this transformative approach to offerings and the inclusion of immersive elements, such as virtual or augmented reality, to enhance experiences.

Written by Ana Moreno-Lobato, Universidad de Extremadura, Spain
Read Ana’s letter to the next generation of tourism researchers

References

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