Co-creating the tourism experience

Consumer-firm co-creation is increasing in the tourism industry. In light of the central role of customer experience in tourism, this research is motivated by the limited understanding of the effects that customer co-creations have on the tourism experience. We examine the importance of co-creation in terms of its influence on the tourism experience and the customer's intention to revisit the destination. Using three independent experiments, this study theorizes and establishes empirical support for three hypotheses: 1) Effect of customer experience on customer intention to return to the tourism service, 2) Effect of degree of co-creation on customer experience of the tourism service, and 3) Moderating effect of co-creation on the relationship between customer experience and intention to revisit. Our results suggest that co-creation influences the tourism experience. Co-creation is found to moderate the effect of the tourism experience on customer revisit intentions in high co-creation situations, but not in low co-creation situations. We discuss several implications of our research for a number of domains, such as novelty-seeking in tourism, collaborations between different stakeholders, employee motivation, and the antecedent effect of co-creation.