Prolonging Anticipatory Pleasures

(Originally published in the Good Tourism blog)

New friends and new places to see…I’m on my way.  Familiar refrains sung and spoken by all.  The joys associated with leaving ordinary worlds in search of special worlds.  The pull of the exotic.  The push or escape from the mundane toward the magnificent.  For many, new adventures…travelers pursuing or following their bliss?  I wonder.                                                                                                

Fastidious about the type of respite and experience desired, we can be quite circumspect about finding our version of nirvana.  Given dashed expectations from prior trips, marketing’s exaggerated hype, implied promises, and how it affects our brains, we question whether our options are appropriate, and whether promises made can be fulfilled.

We might turn to trusted sources for confirmation of choice but, once done, we rejoice…happy, though not oblivious to the multiplicities and agonies of anticipation that beset us.

Nevertheless, with bookings completed, high hopes and pre-trip expectations running high, we savor future-forward memories, dreaming about life’s possibilities, how the places we’re going to will change us.

For we are the lucky ones who take our freedoms and right-to-move for granted.  Freedoms denied to so many, whose odysseys are marred by heartache and tragedy (‘lo capitano’).

Based on experiences, we all know that departures can be contentious:  The trial and tribulations of getting to where we hope to be going that can rattle even the most even-headed of temperaments. Even the blur of the arrival that overwhelms, especially the crassness of bureaucracies that rarely allow us to feel victorious, let alone human.

Not to mention the destinations that fail to correspond with pre-conceptions or resemble the images we’ve been bombarded with.  

If only we could emulate the Hero’s Journey…be the hero and have the gumption and acumen to overcome adversity, gain confidence that transformation will happen, our anticipatory pleasures fulfilled.  

And, that’s the point, isn’t it?  If only we, with the help from ‘hidden hands’, could discover the secrets to realizing bliss and encounter…  

Magnificence

Think of all those joyous, golden, and enriching moments when the maximum of beauty and truth unfolds before us; when more is given than is expected; when hospitality melts our isolation, strengthens our resolve and relationships.

Our presence gifted with heartfelt gratitude. The actions of others magnified for our benefit. Our needs respected and honored,

The world of possibilities unfolding, feeling free to explore, thrilled and energized with what we sensationally experience and receive

Magnificence, the embodied experiential wonderment, the pleasures of well-being.  

Happiness realized and hopefully prolonged…but not as the ultimate goal.

Soulless Saboteurs:  We’re all aware of the organizations and destinations that underperform, inattentive to the essential basics of quality, customer service and effectiveness, slashing costs while continuing to spend inordinate amounts on demand creation.

Managers obsessing about growing revenues and market share, putting profits over the creation of community shared value…a hierarchy of value comprised of multiple elements, important to all stakeholders, but too often ignored.

Managers gushing over the potential of martech and adtech (that couldn’t pass Turing Tests), yet failing to invest in, and support, service and social innovations, revealing indifference to strengthening their rapport and relationships with customers and citizens.

Yet, if the ultimate goal is to create customers-for-life (loyalty), why do so many fail to adjust to changes in their lifecycles, lifestyles and desires?  Why jeopardize the creation of real option-based, customer lifetime value? 

Why permit structural, systemic, and strategic impediments to foster misery, monotony, and mediocrity, especially when so many believe that marketing is everything, everything is marketing?

Is it because tourism, as an industry, consists of so many layers and players. A fragmentation that does not easily lend itself to governance and leadership?  Corporate entities always in competitive mode, too many under-serving their communities and undervaluing caring, coordination, cooperation and collaboration?

All shortcomings magnified when unexpected volatility distracts and nullifies the ability to react to real-time events, drawing attention further away from those we serve – our visitors, our employees, our communities.

I raise these issues and ask the questions out of deep respect for those enlightened organizations and communities-as-destinations that put into practice the sincere and transformative power of hospitality (do watch the entire interview). 

Organizations and people who work tirelessly to design spaces and places that elicit emotion, putting joy and happiness at the epicentre of who they are, what they do and stand for.  

As John Stewart Mill once quipped:

I never, indeed, wavered in the conviction that happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and at the end of life.  But now, I thought, that this end was only to be attained by not making it the direct end.  Those only (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some other object other than their happiness, on the happiness of others or the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as an ideal end.  Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.

As confirmed by psychiatrists, it’s the act of noticing and paying attention to the other that always matters most.  The act of creating value that is truly and unforgettably social and life-affirming…values that should be guiding the transformation of our downtowns and destinations so dependent on visitors.

Destinations-in-Action.  If you believe, as I do, that tourism’s success in ultimately contingent on fostering and then sustaining peoples’ anticipatory and aspirational happiness, whether for hosts or guests, we need to undertake some serious soul-searching, so as to overcome those forces that manifest misery, serve to preserve mediocrity, and undermine magnificence.

This will necessitate joint efforts by everyone in individual organizations and destinations.  Entire tourism clusters undertaking deep-dive assessments, examining, expanding, and elevating the notion of creating shared value meaningful for hosts, visitors and communities.

Activities that would benefit from the formation of integrative networks, coalitions, alliances and partnerships.  Everyone committed to activating, inspiring and encouraging greater introspection and buy-in from all stakeholders intent on altering the destiny of destinations, changing the levers of decision-making, and decentralizing power away from the usual power brokers.

DMOs reformulating their rationale and agendas, starting with the need to articulate a noble and principled purpose for tourism, reinventing the management of communities-as-destinations, as proposed by DMOcracy and being undertaken in places like Hawai’i.

But, there has to be more. I like to think of tourism as representing people’s quest for ongoing net pleasure that builds on a foundation of positive expectations, experiences and excitement.

Don’t all destinations already make promises that visitors will enjoy their visits or holidays?  If only they would make those promises clear and unambiguous.  Promises that would actually represent acts of strategy-making…guarantees that destination and visitor experiences will be meaningful, memorable, valuable, and deliverable.

Experiences brought to life through story-doing, not just storytelling.

Destinations reinforcing their commitments to the power of world-class hospitality and experiential wonderment. 

Building success-upon-success through harmonious attachments to and within communities-as-destinations…affirming the presence of, and being present for, all our hosts and our guests.

Visitor-serving enterprises being the ‘hidden hands’, doing their best to energize people’s blitheness of spirit, affirming and prolonging their anticipatory happiness.  Acts of kindness and expressions of gratitude that are bound to spur tourism’s good-to-great trajectories and help rejuvenate communities-as-destinations.

Destinations-in-Action instinctively knowing what’s right and what to do.

Everyone confident to be singing: I’m on my way.