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1. Introduction
It has been widely noted that researchers have adopted a narrow operational focus towards understanding hospitality and associated experiences (Ji et al., 2016a, 2016b; Lugosi, 2014; Lynch et al., 2011). Perhaps because most hospitality publications have emerged from business and managerial related disciplines, it has been commonplace to reduce hospitality experiences to measurable constructs and scientific measurements that fit within the established domains of satisfaction, behavioural intentions and loyalty. Lynch et al. (2011, p. 3) have called for more intellectual representations in hospitality research that consider “the most pressing social, cultural and political questions of our time”. Hospitality experiences should also embrace such critical insights and incorporate more and broader theoretical and politically laden questions ranging from “the material to the ethical to the neuroaesthetic to the imaginative” (Lynch et al., 2011, p. 13). (Though neuroaesthetic approaches have merit for future research, discussion is presented in the latter sections of this paper as they are beyond the scope of the present investigation.) The plentiful literature on tourism image has made way for the growing interest in deeper aspects of the tourist encounter. Simplistic interpretations of the visual have been increasingly challenged by anthropological, sociological and semiotic perspectives that have informed the increasingly customized tourist experience, as it has been mediated through the process of digitized co-creation. A wider range of methodological techniques is needed to elicit insights that extend beyond the superficial and which delve into the tourist’s unconscious. The present study views the hospitality experience as a sociocultural, metaphorical and economic exchange and adopts an embodied approach for purposes of conceptualization.
Already a popular concept within the geography discipline, “embodiment” has been increasingly advocated as an alternative way of conceptualizing hospitality and tourism experiences (Chronis, 2012; Crouch et al., 2005; Everett, 2008). However, with the notable exceptions of Crouch (2000) and Scarles (2009, 2012a, 2012b), previous researchers have focused on ontological debates but neglected methodological developments. Crouch (2000) presented a basic “mental map” concept but did not elaborate. Scarles and Lester (2014) advocated the use of visual methods by asking interviewees to provide photographs that they took during their travel. When this medium is supplemented by interviews, it is capable of inducing embodied experiences (Scarles, 2009, 2012a). It...