A framework for designing visitor experiences in branded tourist attractions: Insights from a luxury Cognac brand

Setting up a tourist attraction provides brands with the opportunity to offer visitors an experience that promotes their brand image. This paper explores how to design such an experience by focusing on the tourist attraction of a famous luxury brand, Hennessy Cognac. Through an in-depth case study, the paper contributes to the tourism literature by developing a framework for experience design in branded tourist attractions. This framework bridges the gap between abstract design principles and corresponding operational actions in practice to support the realization of visitor experiences that improve brand perceptions. Moreover, it suggests a requirement for congruency between the characteristics of the brand and the design of the visitor experience.