Embodied Staging: The Role of the Body in the Strategic Making of Tourism Servicescapes
(A2025-125924)

AUTHORS

ATHINODOROS CHRONIS, California State University, Stanislaus

ABSTRACT

While extant scholarship has theorized both physical and social dimensions of the built environment, not enough attention has been paid to the productive contributions of the body. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to shed light on the role of participating body in the staging of tourism servicescapes. Our empirical context is the staging of a large city as a particular tourist destination where we looked into guided tours as an exemplary kinesthetic consumption experience during which tour guides act as service providers and stage-managers. Our findings promote the idea that consumer’s body is not an external onlooker but, through strategic guidance, it is in constant interaction with the surrounding space and contributes to the construction of servicescapes through embodied staging. Our data reveal four groups of staging strategies and tactics employed by service providers in order to construct a particular servicescape: state-setting, emplacing, regulating, and amplifying.