Destination Relational Aesthetic Qualities: Implications for Experience Design

Aesthetics has long shaped the experiential dimension of tourism, yet conventional approaches have largely privileged visual or object-based beauty, leaving relational dimensions under-theorized. Drawing on relational aesthetics and relational ontology, this paper introduces the Destination Relational Aesthetic Qualities (DRAQ) framework, identifying five qualities—imperfection, incompleteness, non-authorialness, story-like quality, and serendipity—through which relational aesthetic value emerges in tourism encounters. These qualities position destinations as dynamic relational fields where aesthetic value is emergent and co-constituted through situated encounters. To connect theory with practice, the paper further discusses design implications that can guide how destinations cultivate these qualities across experiential domains. This study extends and complements existing approaches to tourism aesthetics by offering both a conceptual vocabulary for scholars and actionable insights for destination design.