ABSTRACT
Tourism is a paradigmatic experience ‘industry’; therefore, it is reasonable that it be a leader in conceptualising experience. Within tourism studies, the largest proportion of research on experience has taken it as subjective (Uriely 2005), which includes postmodern perspectives and psychology (for example, Mannell and Iso-Ahola 1987; McCabe and Foster 2006). There is also a stream of research that focuses on the so-called objective/object of experience (for example, Pine and Gilmore 1999). However, it is clear, today, that experience necessarily involves both subject and object; hence, any theory of and research into touristic experiences must address both. Indeed, there are those who have ventured views of experience that attempt to integrate subject and object (Haldrup and Larsen 2006), but have had difficulty in doing so without also siding with the subject or object as the locus of experience (Aho 2001; Jennings and Nickerson 2006).
