title: Effektivität von Erlebnisinszenierung bei infrastrukturgebundenen Outdooraktivitäten  - Qualitative Studie am Beispiel des Fernwanderwegs Rothaarsteig
titleType: Other
Creators: name: Gerlach, Jan
Publisher: name: Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln
Year: 2012

description: Through the influence of recently changing markets in tourism, new  products using the engineering of experience are being developed in outdoor activities such as hik-ing. This is happening even though the possibilities of the creation and the prediction of the character of other peoples ́ experiences is highly controversial. This grounded-theory  study  aims  to  discuss  the  potential  and  limits  of  experience  engineering  or staging experiences in outdoor activities especially in hiking.  Focused  on  the  example  of  hiking  on  the  „Rothaarsteig“  trail  the  strategies  and themes of experience engineering of this trail were extracted from data consisting of planner ́s materials, expert interviews and promotional literature. Additional data was collected from a sample of n=31 adult hikers (both male and female), who hiked parts of  the  trail  or  the  whole  trail  in  the  summer  of  2008.    This  was  accomplished  using qualitative methods such as visitor employed photography, photo elicitation and pho-tograph  logs.  The  data  was  completed  by  having  the  hikers  take  part  in  a  modified form of focus group at their final destination showing a selection of the hikers ́ photo-graphs on a large screen to provoke comments from the hikers concerning their ex-perience during their hike.  All data was analyzed using QDA software through which codes,  concepts and  categories  of  both  expected and actual  experiences  were  pro-cessed.  Finally, the extracted concepts of experience engineering and the aimed-for-experiences  were  compared  with  the  actual  experiences  of  hikers.  As  the  main  re-sults reveal:  

•    the existing concepts of experience engineering of the “Rothaarsteig” are based on the layout and the surface of the trail, the construction and im-provement  of  experience  infrastructure  (e.g.  platforms,  bridges,  info-boards) and human capital (rangers) 
•    through these concepts the planners and operators of the trail aim for a large  variety  of  experience  to  occur  for  the   
     hikers,  which  can  be  com-bined to form ten basic themes (e.g. nature, landscape, culture and histo-ry) 
•    the spectrum of actual experiences of the sample displays an even larger variety  of  experience,  which  again  can  be   
      united  to  form  15  categories (e.g. nature, landscape, quiet). Most of these compare to motives of hik-ers  and  
      experience  dimensions  in  outdoor  activities  as  proposed  in  the literature.  Eight  additional  dimensions  of  
      experience  could  be  identified for hiking 
•    that, as most of the actual experiences assimilate to the expected expe-rience,   the   strategies   of   today ́s   experience    
     engineering   of   the “Rothaarsteig”  are working and help to process the hoped for user expe-rience.  

The additional experiences identified, which are not yet influenced by experience en-gineering, as well as recent trends in hiking tourism, provide accessible potential for an extended experience-engineering strategy for hikes on the “Rothaarsteig” trail and for hiking and similar outdoor activities at other destinations.