CHAPTER 5

Fostering Pre-Trip Excitement

(or I am So Psyched Up for This Trip I Can’t Stand It!)

Chapter Preview

In this chapter, we discuss how we can use the pre-trip anticipation phase to fuel excitement for our upcoming travel. Principles of anticipation that contribute to the generation of travel enthusiasm are described, and practical strategies for implementing these principles in the trip waiting period are given. Creative ways that travel providers can work with us in this effort to make our trip anticipation experiences fun and rewarding are also explored.

Creating Excitement

As we have seen, we can use the anticipation process to foster receptivity for travel encounters. But the anticipation process can also be a fun time just in itself, and we can use it to facilitate great excitement for what is to come. We can do this by utilizing a balanced combination of holding back, drawing out, and building something up (Patel 2015). This requires constructing a disciplined pacing as we wait for an event to occur and forecasting pleasure by carefully crafting prompts related to what is to come (Roberts 2014). In this process, which is intentionally dragged out, anticipation becomes pleasurable in itself, and a sense of eagerness is created (DiPirro 2013).

As we think about this, imagine that we were planning a trip to New Mexico that was to take place in the early spring of the year. Further, imagine that we were putting together this trip in upstate New York, where the weather was still quite gray, cold, and depressing. How might we use the trip anticipation phase not just as a getting through period to be endured, but rather as something that sparks our enthusiasm for our trip and brings us immediate pleasure while waiting for it to start? There are many ways we might do this.

First, we could buy and pack clothes for our trip over time, rather than simply putting that off until a day or two before our journey begins. For instance, we might purchase new outfits and hiking shoes or other items which we could place in a special part of our closet to look at in anticipation of wearing them on our vacation. We might buy a pre-trip souvenir such as a small turquoise pin that we plan to wear on our plane trip to New Mexico, and then place that in a prominent place in our jewelry box to gaze at. Maybe each evening the week before our trip we could also burn special incense that has the scents of the pinon-juniper trees in it to put us in a New Mexico mood, or every day we could download a picture of a painting by an artist who worked in New Mexico such as Georgia O’Keefe to remind us of the beautiful landscapes and colors we will soon be witnessing firsthand. We could additionally keep a countdown calendar and, as our trip grew nearer, we could mark off each day. All of these little things would contribute to joyful looking-forward to-something experiences.

To consider more the potential power of anticipation to give joy, you might think of some memorable experiences that you have had in your lives that were enriched in some way by the anticipation process. To give some personal examples, I will relate two stories. The first involves my memories of Christmas as a child.

My mother used the art of anticipation to heighten the joy that my sister and I experienced at Christmas in our family. The buildup to Christmas was tremendous. Beautiful ornaments would be put out days ahead, and a tree would be purchased and decorated. Candles would be lit, music would be played, and the smells of evergreen and pine cones would fill the air. Drinks such as eggnog or certain cookies that we never had any other time of year would be prepared. The night before Christmas, a few very special presents would be placed under the tree, and on the morning of Christmas day, both my sister and I would awake to find a small wrapped present placed right at the foot of our beds. This was the first gift. A blow by my father on a special horn (OK, it was plastic) would signal that the day was to officially begin, and my sister and I would wait for this before we came downstairs. Then we would descend the stairs to take in the wonder and glory of all that was before us.

My mother, thus, well understood the art of anticipation. While enjoyable in themselves, these pre-event acts also set a readiness among us for what was to come. Because of this, my sister and I often ended up savoring that pre-time to Christmas as much as Christmas day itself. Clearly, the events that transpired on Christmas day could have been very similar with or without this anticipation period, but our experience of those events probably would have been much altered.

As a second example of the power of anticipation, I think of a visit my husband and I took many years ago to a museum in Bayeux, France. The point of the museum was to offer the visitor a chance to see the famous Bayeux tapestry, which is 224 feet long and was completed in the 11th century. Actually, at the time, we were not so interested in tapestries, and we only went to the museum because we could not think of anything else to do that day. What I remember most about this experience is the way the marvels of this particular tapestry were slowly revealed to us in little pieces. Visitors were led through a series of darkened hallways with beautifully lit displays. Some would show the colors in the tapestry. Some would depict various scenes. Some would show the developmental stages in making a tapestry and the incredible skill and effort it took to create these beautiful images with simple thread. By the time we got to the room where the actual tapestry was displayed, we were in a state of high excitement, and when we turned the corner and saw it in full, it was beautiful and glorious. But part of the reason we appreciated it so much was that we had spent so much time anticipating what it would be like.

We might contrast all this to another way the tapestry might have been displayed. Imagine if the museum’s curators simply put the tapestry in one large room and then had a sign with an arrow pointing to this room placed in the entrance hall as one came into the museum. People then would follow this arrow and see the tapestry right away, perhaps with a placard under it telling them how many threads were involved in its making, how many hours it took to construct it, and what the scenes on it depicted. While seeing the tapestry in that situation might be of some interest to visitors, most people probably would not feel quite the same degree of joy in viewing it as they would when the buildup to its presentation was so intentionally drawn out. In fact, I have seen many tapestries since I was privileged to gaze at the Bayeux tapestry in that small museum in France, but that one remains special in my mind. Such is the power of anticipation.

Working With Travel Providers to Fuel Enthusiasm

So what can we learn from these examples of anticipation experiences? As we have seen, creating excitement in anticipation is facilitated by a combination of discipline and spontaneity, of a delaying and a prompting, and of a kind of playfulness in which we learn simply to have fun as we wait for what is to come (Kumar, Killingsworth and Gilovich 2014). Travel advisors could help us in this process by working with us to build up our excitement while we look forward to our journeys to begin. For instance, they might periodically send us reminders of how close we are to commencing our trips (e.g., “five days to go,” “four days to go,” etc.). They might now and then provide us with intriguing or amusing factoids about our destination places, such as “Did you know that Santa Fe was founded 10 years before the pilgrims landed?” or that “New Mexico is home to the largest hot air balloon festival in the world” (O’Donnell 2015). They might also increase our excitement by telling us about some of the fun things that other visitors to our destinations had done, or about some of the great experiences they had had.

All of this would work to fuel our enthusiasm for coming adventures and would be entertaining as well. As some have reminded us, anticipation is like having free happiness (Dunn and Norton 2014). The joy we can garner from it is only limited by the power of our imaginations. In fact, sometimes the before-the-trip phase can turn into one of the best parts of the whole trip experience, and the opportunities it offers us in this regard should not be missed.

Questions for Discussion

Please work with the following questions to think more about how to increase excitement for upcoming travel adventures. Draw on your own personal experience and/or your experience in some aspect of the travel industry as you do this.

Notes