Varieties of Visitors

A new idea and framework from London Experience Week

OK, last post on London Experience Week! (At least for 2026.)

There was one new idea I gained that week that turned into a framework. And it actually revealed itself before the official start of LXW on Sunday evening in the historic Blackfriars Pub over drinks with Torunn Tronsvang, Founder & Chief Experience Officer of Up Norway, a travel design company up in Norway.

And while I’ll mostly talk about travel & tourism here, this new frameworks has wide applicability, especially to invitational transformations but other kinds of this fifth and final genre of economic offering as well.

Thinking about Visitors

After buying drinks, Torunn peppered me with questions (in a very nice, very Norwegian way, of course!) on transformations and transformational travel in particular. One issue we discussed was the frame of mind of visitors to a destination, and this caused me to stop and think for a bit.

A new idea formed in my mind about three different varieties of visitors

An idea formed in my mind about how different visitors approached their travel experiences. So after a pause I said I thought there were three different varieties.

The three varieties: have intention, on journey, and open to discovery

One, there are those who come with the intention of going through a transformative experience. They have an aspiration and they are looking for the travel experience to change them, often in relationship to the ones with whom they travel. You can work with such guests directly and explicitly to help them achieve their aspirations.

Two, some are already on a transformation journey and may seek to continue that journey through the travel experience. Without a diagnosis and design process for customizing the travel experience (or, really, the set of experiences at a destination or on a trek), you may never uncover this aspiration, and so can be of little direct help. Unless, that is, you make preparation and especially reflection a vital part of your offering, in which case you may well be very helpful to such guests.

Three, many visitors will be open to discovering an aspiration while traveling, for as I write in the first endnote to chapter 4 (which opens with a discussion of travel through the lens of the Progression of Economic Value):

Psychologist Jeffrey Kottler has a simple but profound premise in Travel That Can Change Your Life: How to Create a Transformative Experience (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997): we are most open to change when we travel. [emphasis added; see the post Travel That Can Change Your Life for a review of this book.]

When we travel and visit new places, open ourselves up to new vistas, and meet new people, we become more aware of our selves, more attune to the possibilities, and more inclined to transform.

That’s why the manifesto of the Transformational Travel Council (which I advise) begins with the line “Travel is ripe with the POSSIBILITY of transformation.” It’s worth reading in its entirety:

Travel is ripe with the POSSIBILITY of transformation. If you want something you have never HAD before, you must be willing to DO something you have never done before. Spending time in NATURE is one of the most powerful forms of physical, emotional, and spiritual HEALING. DISCONNECTING from the craziness of everyday life helps us RECONNECT with ourselves, others, and our world. Any adventure is as much about the INNER JOURNEY as it is about the outer one. Traveling with H.E.A.R.T. means having the COURAGE to go within yourself and truly being. Following your P.A.T.H. empowers you to fully engage your journey. Ready to embrace CHALLENGE that comes in many forms: Physical, cultural, emotional, social, and spiritual. Pushing our COMFORT ZONES opens our minds and hearts to new ideas and possibilities. A supportive, regenerative group environment nurtures vulnerable, honest, and powerful CONVERSATIONS that allow us to see everything and everyone through NEW EYES and new perspectives. These ENLIGHTENED PERSPECTIVES bring CLARITY and CONFIDENCE that empower us to take PURPOSEFUL ACTION as we create the life that we want. This inspired action allows us to realize our individual and collective POTENTIAL. Only YOU have the power to transform your life. TOGETHER, WE CAN CHANGE THE WORLD.

I’m spending so much space here on this third one because it’s the most interesting and probably the most prevalent. Consider the example of travel design company Explorer X, run by Michael Bennett (from pp. 95-96 of the book):

Never merely memorable, the highly customized travel experiences that Explorer X designs, books, and encapsulates for its clients—called “explorers”—are meaningful at a minimum, almost always transporting, and frequently transformative. As Bennett, who essentially designed the company as his doctoral dissertation, told me, “What we’ve found over the years is that, in terms of desired outcomes, most people don’t have specific goals or intentions in mind for their travel experiences before they embark. What they do know is that when they approach travel with a curious heart and open mind, something inevitably will happen along the way that invites them to consider new ideas, perspectives, and ways of living.” The catalyst for the transformation, in other words, is usually not instigated in advance, but comes via some discovery made along the way.

The word catalyst here refers to the Categories of Change framework from chapter 3 of the book. Here’s the appropriate discussion from p. 65:

The final category, discovery catalysts, happen during some planned experience you sought—all experiences contain within them the possibility of transformation—with its instigation usually immediate but not nearly as major as a disruption. Such discoveries can happen in areas as varied as attending a thought-provoking play, hearing an enlightening message, traveling to a stunning destination, or visiting an inspiring museum—each one a potential spark of aspiration. Professionally, discovery catalysts can come into play when you encounter something you have not seen or thought of before, such as a new technology unveiled by your R&D organization or another company.

As a transformation guider, you can often prompt people to make a discovery that instigates a transformation that you can then lead them in. Trade shows, conferences, and other events prove great vehicles for discovery, as do travel, conventions, and retail outlets—especially flagship experiences—for consumers.

You can see the wide applicability of discovery catalysts, and in fact it is right here where I inserted the box on invitational transformations, which has the same sets of guests:

• Come with an intention

• Journey on a transformation already

• Are open to discovering an aspiration

Note too that the second paragraph above refers to B2B experiences – invitational transformations themselves – and discovery catalysts also include, as I introduced earlier this year, sales calls (posted in parts one and two).

So you can see the wide applicability of these varieties of visitors. You should consider how they might pertain to your business, and think about how you react and treat guests from each set differently.

You should consider how these three varieties of visitors might pertain to your business

And I did end up talking to these possibilities in my London Experience Week speech.

[As an aside, I asked my illustrator Kevin Dulle to make a slide for the event to make the point in the p. 65 quote – also an aside within the “dashethetical” as I like to call them – that “all experiences contain within them the possibility of transformation”. Until I grabbed that quote for this post, I had forgotten it was in the book!]

One More Possibility

Now, if you know anything about me and my frameworks-based thinking, you’ll know that anytime I come up with three items I always think there’s a fourth – specifically one that fills out a 2x2 matrix. And that is the case here.

It came to me later in my conversation with Torunn, that there may be others that come to a place – travel, invitational transformation, or other potentially transformative experience – resistant to change. There could be many reasons for this, from emotional to psychological to mundane. One of the things I learned from Bob Rogers, the legendary experience designer who gave me the term “invitational transformation” and spoke after me at LXW, is that at the Johnnie Walker Princes Street experience (discussed on pp. 67-8) over 50% of the visitors paying their £25 admission fee are not even whisky drinkers. Bob said they just are looking for a good experience in Edinburgh, or are accompanying a whisky drinker (perhaps begrudgingly). I assume many of these may be resistant to becoming such a person, perhaps intentionally so, and probably are the 18% who are not “likely” or “more likely” to consumer the brand’s whisky.