• Dr. Kawal Gill

Tourism characterized by immense innovativeness, has primarily being concerned with visiting, seeing, and living in a different form of life. The new element ‘experience’ has added another dimension. The challenge lies in intentionally producing, organizing and pricing it to sell it as a ‘complete experience’ from customer journey perspective. The customer journey concept is built over five distinct innovation design areas that influence the customer experience. The physical environment, the service employees, the service delivery process, customers and back office support. The key pillars of the success of peri urban (urban fringes) farm tourism in India have been built on the multi-functionality of farms to develop and market leisure experiences to domestic and international tourism markets while preserving rural landscapes, supporting farm and food production, integrating ‘authentic’ village heritage and culture, educating and entertaining visitors. In the present study a case of farm tourism is presented to demonstrate that innovations carried out in physical environment, the service employees, the service delivery process and back office support influence the visitor experience as a whole.The state of Haryana, sharing border with the capital city New Delhi, India was selected, as it is a pioneer in implementing the farm tourism initiative taken by the Government of India. Secondly, most of the farms in the study were located at a distance under one hundred kilometres allowing visitors to take a day’s trip and come back. The data was collected through semi structured interviews conducted at the farm sites. The recorded interviews were then transcribed and inputted into QSR NVivo 11 software for coding of key themes. The findings suggest that all the farm owners were able to create hybrid rural and urban recreational products and services to cater to wide customer segments. The physical environment of every farm was unique, designed in a way to stimulate the five senses. Secondly, the staff was encouraged to engage with visitors and demonstrate various activities to make their experience more memorable. Thirdly, to make the service delivery process more effective, most of the farm operators designed and organized all the activities innovatively so that the visitors remember the most pleasurable moments in the journey. Lastly, to deliver great customer experience back office staff was selected very carefully to perform multiple roles to add to the front stage experience, if needed.

Experiential, Innovation, Peri urban, Farm tourism

"Innovations in Experiential Services: A Case of Peri Urban Farm Tourism in New Delhi, India.", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 6, page no.328-342, June 2019, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1906X79.pdf

"Innovations in Experiential Services: A Case of Peri Urban Farm Tourism in New Delhi, India.", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 6, page no. pp328-342, June 2019, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1906X79.pdf