TRANSFORMATION IN THE TOURISM INDUSTRY: EXPERIENCING SERVICE INNOVATION STRATEGIES

This dissertation joins a vibrant conversation in social sciences about the challenging nature of innovative service experiences in a continuous changing environment, especially in the context of tourism and hybrid organizations. Nowadays, organizations serves a very different world, a world transformed by dramatic shifts in demographics, the impact of globalization, and stunning advances in technology. Past research has recognized the importance of complex organizational and strategic issues that must be resolved and managed if service delivery is to be effective. To address and solve these problems, we drew on research that probes into content experiential tourism experiences of visitors from the perspective of marketing and cultural sociology. A mixed set of existing qualitative tools is applied to different case studies, in a responsive research approach to the existing field conditions. This research will conceptualize innovative service experience and try to reveal a better understanding of “How to innovate customer-centric service experiences across the entire customer journey, including different offerings, touch points, and channels. Further, this thesis aims at filling gaps highlighting three key areas of focus identified as the central themes which will be the driving forces of change in the future; namely the forces of demographic change with an aging population (Paper 1), digital transformation (Paper 2), wealth and societal well-being (Paper 3). This study presents the first endeavor to fill gaps in transformative services when trying to understand the perceived value of an aging population and digitization; when attempting to raise questions about the possible rational costs of the importance in building trust in human-digital offerings simultaneously within museum digital transformation and last but not least by examining co-creative practices with mindfulness drawn from producers and visitors of hybrid organizations to try to identify and capture value in sustainable development plans. The results enrich the theoretical perspective of innovative service experience values focusing on its relationship with perceived value dimensions, behavioral intentions, and co-creational mindful behaviors.