Measuring emotions in tourism experiences - A hands-on workshop for postgraduate students with Dr Ondrej Mitas (Breda University of Applied Sciences)

As part of an Erasmus+ exchange, Turistica hosted Dr Ondrej Mitas (Academy for Tourism, Breda University of Applied Sciences), an expert in the psychology of tourism and leisure experiences whose research focuses on emotions, well-being and quality of life. Alongside a lecture on the role of emotions in tourism experiences, methods for measuring them, and how organisations can manage experiences, he delivered a hands-on workshop for postgraduate students.

The workshop was built entirely around working with the equipment: how to design a measurement using skin conductance (GSR) devices, capture physiological response data during an experience, and then prepare and analyse that data. Participants followed the full path from setting up a measurement protocol to interpreting the signal – including the limits of the method and what physiological data cannot tell us.

For Centre DOIT the workshop was a turning point: this was our first direct experience with the Shimmer skin conductance equipment that is now part of the centre's research inventory and available to students, researchers and partners for their own experience research. The collaboration with Places & Flows Lab, the interdisciplinary research and development platform at Breda University of Applied Sciences, marks an important step towards advanced research methods at Turistica and the beginning of a promising partnership in measuring and designing tourism experiences.