Service, tourism

The study of services marketing and management grew in the latter part of the twentieth century. The term “service” can take on two different meanings: the service provided in the delivery of a tangible product to the customer or the product itself (such as travel booking service). Some defining characteristics of service offerings include that they tend to be intangible (the consumer does not take a physical product home), perishable (if not sold today, they cannot be stored), heterogeneous (the service offering can be highly variable), and inseparable (the consumer and the provider both usually need to be present). Some of the key areas of scholarly research include service encounter, customer satisfaction, service quality, customer loyalty, service failure or recovery, and, more recently, customer experience.

Tourism encapsulates many industries, and each may vary in respect of the service offered. Some of the key experiences a tourist is likely to encounter include accommodation,...