As the name suggests, experiential travel or immersive travel gives importance to experiencing the destination on a deeper level, allowing travellers to ´immerse´ themselves into the local culture rather than lightly touching ground with what the destination has to offer culturally.
At XOTELS, we have seen an increase in demand for experiential travel leading to new opportunities for hoteliers to tap into.
For this reason, it is important for hoteliers to ask themselves how to differentiate these different types of travelling. The need is there to understand what immersive travel is to be able to create new services and products catering to this audience.
See below an example of how experiential travel differs from ‘regular’ vacation travel:
Culinary
- Regular travelling:
- Going out for a dinner to a local restaurant.
Vs.
- Experiential travel:
- Taking a cooking class where you learn about local ingredients, cooking techniques, and the cultural aspect of each individual dish or ingredient.
Tours
- Regular travelling:
- Taking the hop-on hop-off bus and seeing the city’s main sightseeing spots in a day’s worth of time.
Vs.
- Experiential travel:
- Visiting indigenous village where you learn about how the people live, what they eat, what their beliefs are.
Synonyms:
See also:
