NS34 Session 25

 

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Title: Transformative Tourism Experiences

Organisers: Konstantin Gridnevskiy and Sarah Seidel

Affiliation: NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences 

 

Description

Tourism is increasingly expected to be an active agent for good in a world shaped by climate change, geopolitical uncertainty, digital disruption, and demands for social justice. This session invites papers that examine transformative tourism experiences as a pathway through which tourism may contribute to positive development — starting with the traveller and extending to communities and environments.

We welcome papers that examine transformative tourism at the individual level. The focus is on the tourist (and, where relevant, other individuals engaged in tourism such as hosts, guides, and workers) and the ways tourism experiences may trigger shifts in identity, values, emotions, beliefs, attitudes, and everyday practices. We invite conceptual, critical, and empirical research that explores transformation as a process occurring before, during, and after travel — including how transformation is initiated, facilitated, and sustained over time. We particularly encourage contributions that connect individual transformation to contemporary conditions affecting tourism.
Possible topics include:

• Identifying which features of tourism experiences act as catalysts for transformation
• Exploring how travellers interpret, internalise, and apply transformative insights after returning home
• Assessing observable and measurable effects on well-being, identity development, and behavioural change
• Considering how experiences can be purposefully crafted to maximise transformative potential
• Examining whether transformation reflects profound value/belief change or primarily behavioural adjustment
• Investigating how timing (before, during, and after travel) shapes both intensity and long-term sustainability
• Addressing ethical and methodological challenges in studying personal transformation through tourism

By engaging with these topics, this session aims to refine conceptual understandings of transformation in tourism while also providing insights relevant to practice and policy.

 

Abstracts

 

Title: From Experience to Ambassadorship: The Transformative Role of Science in Antarctic Deep-Field Tourism
Author: Alix Varnajot, University of Oulu

This paper examines how science-tourism practices shape transformative experiences and ambassadorship in Antarctic deep-field tourism. In this study, science-tourism practices are understood both as tour operators’ logistical support to scientific research and as the integration of science communication into the tourist experience. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted over four weeks at a deep-field camp in East Antarctica, the study is based on participant observation and 21 semi-structured interviews with tourists.

The findings show that engagement with science plays a significant role in shaping visitors’ experiences and reflections. Science-tourism practices contribute to both operational and moral legitimacy, reinforcing trust in tour operators while providing ethical reassurance in a context characterized by environmental fragility and high carbon footprints. In this sense, science helps tourists make sense of the ambivalence associated with visiting Antarctica, often described in terms of awe and discomfort. The paper also shows how tourists prefer to engage in knowledge-based experiences during their stay in Antarctica. As a result, the paper seeks to provide practical solutions to actively cultivate on-site transformative experiences for more efficient ambassadorship.

By focusing on a niche and underexplored segment of Antarctic tourism, this paper contributes to ongoing discussions on transformative tourism by highlighting the role of science-tourism practices in shaping how visitors interpret, justify, and potentially act upon their experiences in environmentally sensitive destinations.

 

Title: Museum Immersion as a Catalyst for Transformative Experiences
Author: Olga Gjerald, University of Stavanger

As museums become increasingly central to cultural tourism, there is a growing need to understand how museum experiences may contribute to personal transformation. Transformative tourism research often focuses on experiences that shift visitors’ emotions, perspectives, values, and everyday practices. Less attention has been given to how such transformation is initiated within cultural spaces, particularly in non-digital museum settings. This study develops a spatio-temporal framework for understanding museum immersion as a possible catalyst for transformative visitor experiences. The framework is structured around the concept of the chronotope, understood as the interrelation of time and space in experience. It examines how immersion is shaped through the “when”, “where” and “what” of the museum experiencescape: temporal configurations, spatial arrangements and material encounters. Building on existing literature on immersion as absorption, transportation and situated engagement, this research explores how visitors may become immersed through intensified presence, temporal layering, spatial displacement and material actualization. The study outlines a mixed-method research design to examine how spatio-temporal perceptions initiate and sustain visitor involvement, and how immersive museum experiences may contribute to transformative processes during and potentially after the visit. Funding information: This work is funded by the Research Council of Norway through the IMMERSE project, project no. 358865.

 

Title: Transformative for Whom? Towards Conceptual Clarity Around Tourist Transformation in Extraordinary Environments
Authors: Elizabeth Cooper, University of Groningen, Netherlands, Anna Zinn, University of Queensland, Australia, and Zdenka Sokolickova, University of Groningen, Netherlands

Visits to remote and extraordinary destinations have long been espoused, both in the tourism industry and in academic literature, as instruments for individual transformation. The transformative narrative around Antarctica is decidedly environmental; in other words, it is widely claimed that a visit to Antarctica triggers a pro-environmental transformation in tourists. In recent years, this literature has become conflated with more general literature on transformation in tourism, such that any evidence of individual transformation in Antarctic tourists is readily interpreted as evidence of pro-environmental behaviour change. An important conceptual oversight is that there are inevitably various types of transformations, some of which may benefit others (e.g. pro-environmental transformation), and some of which may only benefit the self (e.g. an alteration of perspective leading to a career change). In the current paper, we aim to disentangle different types of tourist transformations, and specifically to understand the transformation undergone by visitors to Antarctica (if any). To do so, we analyse travel journals written by 21 guests on a 2-week Antarctic cruise. Participants were asked to write about their thoughts and feelings on each day of the voyage. Through qualitative time-series analysis, we are able to understand not only the nuances of participants’ individual transformations, but also how these transformations emerge and develop over time. We are currently analysing the data, but will present results at the conference. We will draw conclusions on the types of transformations experienced by Antarctic tourists, on whom they benefit, and thus bring conceptual clarity to the issue of tourist transformation and pro-environmental behaviour change in tourism.

Keywords: Transformation, Pro-environmental change, Behaviour change, Antarctica, Time-series analysis

 

Title: When Tourism Transforms Us: Rethinking the Valence of Tourist Transformation
Authors: Konstantin Gridnevskiy, NHL Stenden, The Netherlands, Dr. Catriona Murphy, TUS, Ireland, and Dr. Elena Cavagnaro, NHL Stenden, The Netherlands

Tourism is often associated with personal growth, renewal, openness, empathy, environmental awareness, and more responsible behaviour, which are commonly understood as beneficial or desirable outcomes and therefore framed as positive. Yet transformation is not necessarily positive. As part of a wider PhD study on transformative tourism and transformative experiences, this presentation examines valence, which is understood as the direction and nature of the outcomes that may emerge from tourist transformation.

The presentation draws on wider transformation scholarship that understands transformation as deeper than temporary alteration. For example, Feola (2015) highlights the conceptual ambiguity of transformation, while Fazey et al. (2017) suggest that it can be examined through depth, breadth, and speed. In tourism studies more generally, Tasci and Godovykh (2021) suggest that transformation is inherently framed as a positive outcome. Their evaluation reveals the potential for results to be interpreted in divergent ways pending perspectives while Carel and Kidd (2014) reinforce how transformative experiences may be positive, negative, mixed, or ambivalent.

Tourism examples illustrate why valence matters. In pilgrimage, Al-Ajarma (2021) shows how spiritual rejuvenation may coexist with fear of failing religious expectations. In volunteer tourism, Polus and Carr (2024) identify connectedness and rejuvenation, but also guilt, sadness, and powerlessness. In cultural tourism, Teoh et al. (2023) show that experiences may support self-transcendent values, yet may also reinforce self-enhancement or antisocial attitudes.

The presentation argues that tourist transformation should be understood not only in terms of its depth, but also in terms of how it is experienced, interpreted, and valued.