Envisaging creative tourism through boutique hotels: an integrated framework of transformative experience

ABSTRACTExperience co-creation as a distinguishing aspect of creative tourism has garnered significant scholarly attention. However, there remains a dearth of studies that investigates the phenomenon of value co-creation in innovative spaces such as boutique hotels. The present study examines boutique hotels in the creative city of Jaipur in India as potential vehicles of creativity. The study aims to identify boutique hotel attributes that facilitate value co-creation and their association with transformative tourism experiences. By utilising value co-creation theory and transformative learning theory, this study has proposed a research framework which has been empirically validated by performing structural equation modelling on data collected from 508 tourists. The results indicate that the three boutique hotel attributes, namely interactive authenticity, emotional authenticity, and novel atmosphere, are significant predictors of perceived value co-creation and transformative experiences. Further, we find that ethnocentrism, as a pre-trip emotion, exerts a positive moderating effect on the association between emotional authenticity and value co-creation. This study highlights the key attributes of boutique hotels envisaging creative tourism which can be strategically incorporated by hotel managers and destination planners. The findings offer insightful implications for industry practice and policy towards developing business opportunities and entrepreneurial ventures for creative tourism.KEYWORDS: Creative tourismtransformationvalue co-creationethnocentrismboutique hotelstructural equation modelling Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Table S1: Demographic profile of the respondents in the quantitative studyDownload CSVDisplay TableTable S2: Measurement properties, sources and itemsDownload CSVDisplay TableTable S3: Results of Main EffectsDownload CSVDisplay TableAdditional informationNotes on contributorsShradha KabraShradha Kabra holds a PhD degree from the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, India. Her research interests include culture and media studies, particularly focused upon creative and wellness tourism, and indigenous tourism development.Pratibha SinghPratibha Singh is currently serving as an Assistant Professor at Birla Institute of Management Technology. Her body of work specialises in the area of consumer behaviour and social media advertising. Her current research interests include, social media advertising, green mobility, IoT innovation adoption and Tourism. She has published in several management journals of repute and contributed to proceedings of International conferences. Her research has appeared in International Journal of Information Management, Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, International Journal of Technology Marketing and other leading journals.