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Purpose This paper aims to provide a critical reflection on the experience design of the lifestyle communities in the hospitality and tourism industry. Specifically, this paper proposes a conceptual model that governs experience design in creating unique and memorable experiences for lifestyle communities. Design/methodology/approach This paper is based on a critical analysis of emerging phenomena, related literature and researchers’ experiences and insights. Findings The lifestyle community is conceptualized as a group of people who share a specific interest, value or activity and the type of its existence can be classified as physical, virtual or hybrid. As the importance of experience design has been highlighted in the hospitality and tourism industry, the study provides the guest experience design framework of lifestyle communities that suggests an operationalization of experience design that touches shared values of customers within lifestyle communities. Research limitations/implications This study introduces a framework that highlights the role of experience design in the development of lifestyle communities, thereby enriching the emerging body of knowledge. Additionally, the research illustrates how lifestyle communities diverge from traditional hospitality business models by using distinctive positioning strategies. Practical implications This study provides practical implications on how to capture the growing number of customers represented by lifestyle communities in the future. A deep understanding of frameworks may be crucial to establishing the experience design of lifestyle communities to correspond to the future of the hospitality and tourism industry. Originality/value This study remarks an initial attempt to provide a critical reflection of a rising contemporary issue: experience design and lifestyle communities. Conceptualization through a profound reflection of the issue offers insights to define existing phenomena and suggestions to capture future opportunities and actual management. Furthermore, future research directions in hospitality and tourism are elucidated by the provided conceptual frameworks.
Zhang et al. (Tue,) studied this question.