Author Bios (50 Words for each Author)

Thilini Alahakoon

Thilini is a PhD student of QUT Business School, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. She is also a marketing lecturer at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka with five years of teaching and administrative experience. Her research interests include destination marketing, experience studies, transformative travel, and cultural and heritage tourism.

Associate Professor Steven Pike

Professor Pike is from QUT Business School – Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations. His research interests include destination marketing, tourism marketing, brand performance measurement and Repertory Test. He has 20 years of experience in the tourism industry. Professor Pike also has over 100 publications that include books and award-winning journal articles.

Associate Professor Amanda Beatson

Professor Beatson is from QUT Business School – Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations. Her research interests include transformative services, self-service technology, services marketing and management, service strategy and customer value. She also has service-related work experience in Australia and New Zealand.

Abstract (150 Words)

The uniqueness of transformative travel lies in its subjective, enduring, and personal growth-oriented nature. Despite this uniqueness and the role the place/setting play in triggering transformations, there is a lack of academic focus on destinations and relevant traveller perceptions as viewed from a transformative lens. Therefore, we use a destination image perspective to propose the notion of transformative destinations (i.e., places that have the potential to trigger transformations by creating a sense of otherness) and to present a conceptualisation of the transformative destination image. Accordingly, based on Fishbein’s theory of attitude-behaviour relations and considering the importance of novelty, a willing and open mindset and subjectiveness for transformative travel, we posit that destination familiarity, perceived cultural distance, travellers’ personal values, and the degree of mindfulness during an experience influence the transformative destination image which then induces behavioural intentions.

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A model of destination image for transformative travel

The uniqueness of transformative travel lies in its subjective, enduring, and personal growth-oriented nature. Despite this uniqueness and the role the place/setting play in triggering transformations, there is a lack of academic focus on destinations and relevant traveller perceptions as viewed from a transformative lens. Therefore, we use a destination image perspective to propose the notion of transformative destinations (i.e., places that have the potential to trigger transformations by creating a sense of otherness) and to present a conceptualisation of the transformative destination image. Accordingly, based on Fishbein’s theory of attitude-behaviour relations and considering the importance of novelty, a willing and open mindset and subjectiveness for transformative travel, we posit that destination familiarity, perceived cultural distance, travellers’ personal values, and the degree of mindfulness during an experience influence the transformative destination image which then induces behavioural intentions.