Hunting as a travel experience: An auto-ethnographic study of hunting tourism in Finland and the USA

The aim of this paper is to increase our understanding about the experienced value of hunting as a travel experience. Experienced value refers to the individualʹs multidimensional outcome of the hunting experience. The study consists of an auto-ethnography of one hunter and diary notes, photos and memories of the other. Holbrookʹs typology of consumer value has been used as the theoretical framework for analyzing the data. The findings suggest that first, numerous types of value may come into play during the course of one particular hunt, and second, that in tourism, “togetherness” should be included in the consumer value typology as a new dimension of intrinsic other-oriented. Active togetherness value refers to the person whose traveling would be motivated by the need to offer and share experiences for and with the loved ones and the reactive dimension is the reaction of those accepting this offer.