Memorable Whale Watching Tourism Experiences: Insights From the Azores

This study examines the roles of learning, experience co-creation, and experiential satisfaction as antecedents of a memorable whale-watching tourism experience, as well as the relationships between experiential satisfaction, memorable whale-watching tourism experience, hedonic well-being, place attachment, and pro-environmental behavior. Using data collected from 247 tourists who had taken a whale-watching trip in the Azores, partial least squares structural equation modeling was then applied to the dataset. The results indicate that the higher the levels of learning, experience co-creation, and experiential satisfaction, the more memorable is the whale-watching tourism experience. Experiential satisfaction and memorable whale-watching tourism experience are, in turn, significant determinants of hedonic well-being, place attachment, and pro-environmental behavior. The paper therefore calls for greater efforts by whale-watching trip providers to enhance their learning and interpretation programs and to ensure that the overall trip experience is as interactive as possible.