The peripheral and core tourism experiences: a conceptual study in Australia

This conceptual study examines peripheral and core tourism experiences in Australia using online data collection of reviews by tourists. To date most of the obvious and major tourism factors have been researched and recognised as a single driver to a tourist community including major events, major attractions and popular well known world locations (Crompton & McKay 1997), while little is known of how these factors contribute to initial and subsequent visits to a destination. Limited research has been conducted in tourism to ascertain how the choice of destination contributes to the over success and visitation in a region (Schmallegger & Carson 2010). Other fields of product and service marketing recognise the premise of core and peripheral attributes as consumption motivators (Qu, Kim & Im 2011). Applied in tourism core and peripheral factors suggest the notion of a core or main experience to a destination such as a major attraction or major event with a peripheral experience suggested as an augmentation, such as local unique cultural phenomena, local produce, culture and arts and local attractions. The conceptual model developed for this study assimilates the qualitative results from the online data collection to develop a model uniquely contextualised for investigating the tourist’s perception of peripheral and core experiences in Australia.