van der Lem, Lisa (2022) The organised walking event along the St. Declan's Way: The tourist journey from an experiential perspective. Master thesis, Cultural Geography - Tourism Geography and Planning (TGP).
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Abstract
This research focuses on the St. Declan’s Way. A 115-km long pilgrimage trail located in County Tipperary and County Waterford, Ireland. The re-opening of the St. Declan’s Way, which started in 2012, became a successful bottom-up initiative supported by local voluntary groups, regional tourism organisations and state funding departments. However, from web research, it was found that there is no documentation on the tourist experience they want to create and provide. From the literature, it was established that while many organisations and researchers focus on development guidelines for the enhancement of pilgrimage tourism, none of these online guidelines emphasise on customer experience management (Nouch & Bradley, 2018; UNWTO, 2019; Bausch, Schröder, & Gunya, 2020). In other words, there is a lack of a customer-centric development approach. The destinations provide a service to the tourist with the tourist being relatively passive (Norton & Pine, 2013; McColl-Kennedy, et al., 2015). Moreover, almost no research has been conducted regarding the customer experience on pilgrimage routes. The articles that were found did not compare the actual with the planned tourist journey (Forlani , Ferrucci, & Picciotti, 2021). This research therefore aimed to identify how the tourist journey from an experiential approach can contribute to the improvement of the planned tourist experience along the St. Declan’s Way. This research was written from an experiential approach in which the researcher fully participated in the walking events of the 3rd, 4th , and 5th stages of the St. Declan’s Way. To rightfully document the actual tourist journey, participant observation was applied in which the researcher described and analysed her own personal experience using an experience diary and the ServQual method. Moreover, three semi-structured interviews were held with volunteers involved in KMDA and the Steering Committee to gather data on the planned tourist journey. The most important gaps identified in the tourist experience were related to transportation, accommodation, information provision at cultural artefacts, check-in location of the event, and social media presence. Most of these missing touchpoints were also identified by the KMDA and the Steering Committee. From the interviews, it was established that the organisations have difficulty overcoming these issues as there is no funding available. This research therefore proposes different budget-efficient solutions.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
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| Name supervisor: | Hartman, S. |
| Date Deposited: | 14 Sep 2022 12:03 |
| Last Modified: | 14 Sep 2022 12:03 |
| URI: | https://campus-fryslan.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/195 |
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