The visiting experience of a cultural city in the experiential perspective: the case of Urbino

This work aims to: 1) explore the experiential dimensions of visiting a cultural city, through the Pine and Gilmore model (1999) and 2) understand whether the experiential components vary depending on the socio-demographic and behavioral characteristics of the respondents, the perception of the quality of the basic services and the hospitality of the residents. To this end, a preliminary study was undertaken, based on data collected for a previous research on tourism in Urbino. The main research findings suggest that the positive experience of visiting Urbino is mainly linked to the experiential components of the aesthetic type, while the negative aspects of the tourist experience derive from the lack of basic services. Concerning the perception of the experiencescape components, three findings emerge: 1) the sociodemographic and behavioral profile of tourists does not affect the perception of the experiential dimensions; 2) the perception of the quality of tourist services affects the intensity of the experiential components; 3) the lack of hospitality affects the perception of the experiential dimensions connected to aesthetics.