Passive entertainment versus engaging experience
By Dorenda Britten and Michaela Blacklock

How often is it that we have an experience so totally all-consuming that we feel compelled to tell everyone about it?

However, when we try to describe it, words frequently fail us and the expression we fall back on is "you needed to be there".

Our expectation of being thrilled by experiences is apparently insatiable and therefore of great importance to business. Customers are seeking experiences that thrill in a deep personal sense, more lasting than a short-lived adrenaline shot. We may also desire this experience to offer us ‘learning’, self improvement or for it to address a fear.

Where is the paradigm shift? We often pay lip service to the importance of creating ‘customer evangelists’ but what would we truly have to do to make this a reality? To reach such a place requires a process of careful research and design. This must invoke thought processes that creatively and broadly imagine and define future customer demand. To envisage the future and fulfil a currently unrecognised need for those customers is the aim.

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Surely a true experience should leave the participants with a different view of the world, otherwise what is the purpose of providing an experience at all? This is the difference between passive enjoyment and active involvement and engagement – the difference between entertainment and experience.

One example of such an experience is Mike Tamaki’s Heritage Village which opened to visitors earlier this year. This is a ground breaking attempt and may provide a new benchmark.Visitors, or as they are better described - participants, are transported in time and confronted with a representation of the past that is provocative, emotionally engaging and at times genuinely fear invoking. This is a truly two way interactive experience that crosses many boundaries traditionally tiptoed around. It is confronting for both Maori and European cultures with responsibility and credit attributed to both sides.

Characters representing the period, guide participants and provide a means of ‘brokering’ and enhancing individual involvement. Participants’ need to contribute to their own experience is satisfied, in that their input helps shape the experience for all involved. It is largely this attention to individual needs and the potential for participants to engage wholly that makes this opportunity so unique.

One of the key messages that we derived from Mike Tamaki and his team is that they are all talking the same ‘design’ language. They all understand the vision and there is clarity of purpose and passion for delivering on this.

The design of an ‘experience offering’ must be a partnership between the participant and the provider. The resulting product must consider aspects of the physical, emotional and psychological makeup of people in order to deliver on personal safety and comfort levels.

In this sense a well known and enduring example for New Zealanders is Outward Bound. Participants are expected to make the experience their own and it is made clear from the outset that what they get out of it is a direct reflection of what they put in.

The efforts of Mike Tamaki’s group have created a total immersion in the historical journey of the settlement of New Zealand. This is worlds away from the model employed in entertainment where the audience becomes a receptacle for the directors/producers of the performance. This is no kapahaka or ‘song and dance’ extravaganza!

In a world where many people have an abundance of things, it is experiences that have now become highly prized. We look to fill our souls with meaningful stories that we can revisit and share for a lifetime.

With respect to tourism, it is time to recognise that we can go beyond the concrete representations of our culture that others have so blatantly and ignorantly replicated – the plastic tiki, Maori dolls and jade, imported from China, crafted into New Zealand imagery.

We have something that no other country can replicate – a unique cultural offering with which we can create extraordinary value not only for our visitors but a truly reflective experience for New Zealanders themselves.

Tamaki Heritage Village has recognised this….who will be courageous enough to join them?

Your feedback is gratefully received.

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