Experience structure and differences of ice and snow tourists in China

As ice and snow tourism resources become increasingly abundant, tourists' experiential demands have grown more diversified and sophisticated. However, existing studies remain limited in their systematic examination of the internal structure of ice and snow tourism experiences, as well as the differentiated characteristics among tourist groups. Guided by the event experience scale proposed by DeGeus et al. as the theoretical framework, this study constructs a multidimensional experience structure for ice and snow tourism. Quantitative data are extracted from user-generated online travel narratives related to ice and snow tourism. Cluster analysis and chi-square tests are employed to examine differences among tourist types in terms of individual characteristics and destination attributes of tourists. The results yield three main findings. First, the experience structure of ice and snow tourism comprises four core dimensions: physical engagement, affective engagement, cognitive engagement, and experiencing novelty. This structure highlights the embodied interaction between tourists and the ice and snow tourism context, underscoring the prominent role of bodily participation in shaping tourism experiences. Second, according to the experience structure, ice and snow tourists can be classified into six distinct types: novelty-seeking explorers, leisure and entertainment seekers, diversified experience seekers, body-mind immersion seekers, exploratory knowledge seekers, and emotion-cognition resonance seekers. Significant differences are observed among these tourist types with regard to gender distribution, tourist source, travel companions, and experience situation. These findings reveal pronounced heterogeneity within the ice and snow tourism market and demonstrate the necessity of differentiated experience design and management strategies. The study deepens the understanding of the mechanism of ice and snow tourism experience generation from an embodied perspective, and expands the application of event experience scale in tourism research. The findings also provide empirical evidence to inform ice and snow tourism product development, experience optimization, and market segmentation, offering valuable insights for achieving experience-oriented and high-quality development of ice and snow tourism destinations.