Update 2008

I have been looking through the articles I have with a different set of questions in mind. My first run-through showed the emergence of factor analysis as the prefered approach, and the lack of consensus on satisfaction, quality, value.

My first impressions are that some authors are looking at quite different things:

the SERVQUAL approach and many of its buddies are really geared towards services made up of one encounter, or closer to one encounter than a tourism product, defined more through time than anything else (2 weeks for example).

The models that consider 'overall' satisfaction etc. are perhaps more applicable to the 'walking into the bank' style services than a complex jumble of encounters. This leads me more towards a division of the tour product into parts! but how should this be structured? Chronologically? or by function? or outcome? or encounter? or by feelings? cognitive / affective?

The danger of overally things is that the nuances of a tourism product may be lost - even a hotel attribute model is not spread over time like a series of encounters. A hotel is made up of a series of features, whilst an adventure tour is made up of a series of encounters over time - so it makes sense to divide the tour by encounters over time. to some extent.

One big light-bulb today was the realisation that value is a kind of non-starter, as each encounter would need to have a price associated with it - this may be possible for excursions, but not really in general. An overall value assessment may be possible, but not divided up.

Am I going to consider the tour as a series of encounters? a series of people? what about tangibles?

The more I think about it, it is more like a theatre production 'an experience' how is this assessed in the literature?