Designing phygital tourism experiencescapes for tourist well-being: a transformative service framework
Hasan Hüseyin ErdoğanPurpose
This paper aims to develop a Transformative Service Research (TSR)-informed framework explaining how phygital tourism experiencescapes can be designed to foster tourist well-being. It addresses limited understanding of how hybrid physical–digital service environments can operate as well-being-oriented transformative systems beyond technological enhancement and engagement.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopts an integrative conceptual approach because phygital transformative tourism experiencescapes constitute an emergent, multidisciplinary and theoretically fragmented domain. It synthesizes customer experience, tourist well-being and service research through thematic clustering to clarify relationships among service environments, tourists’ interpretive processes and well-being-oriented transformation. This synthesis generates six framework elements: experiencescape stimuli, decoding mechanisms, experience types, transformative mechanisms, well-being outcomes and experiential marketing as a design layer.
Findings
The paper proposes a Stimulus–Experience–Well-being framework. Phygital experiencescape stimuli are interpreted through sensoriality, cognition, affectivity, sociability, conativity, pragmatism and lifestyle alignment mechanisms, producing experience types such as immersion, refreshment, reflection, volunteering, challenge, education, entertainment, socialization and sensory experience. These experiences activate transformative mechanisms that shape hedonic, eudaimonic, collective and occupational well-being, while poorly configured technologies may generate overload, technostress or negative transformation.
Practical implications
The framework guides managers to align experiential marketing practices – multisensory design, customization, co-creation, gamification and theming – with intended experience pathways, well-being outcomes and phygital tools.
Social implications
The study highlights how phygital tourism can support participation, cultural awareness, empathy and responsible behavior.
Originality/value
The study extends TSR into phygital tourism, refines stimulus–organism–response logic by specifying two mediating layers, and integrates experiential marketing as a service-system design lever for transforming hybrid experiences into well-being outcomes.