Profiling the Heritage Experience in Macao’s Historic Center

This paper applies Pine and Gilmore’s four realms of experience – Esthetic, Escapism, Entertainment and Education – to investigate Macao’s Historic Center in terms of the experience value attached to different heritage sites by tourists, with implications for understanding the experience profile of heritage tourism sites in general. The research is based on a survey of 700 tourists. Dominant experience profiles for the sites, which differ from that of the Historic Center as a whole, are identified and discussed, as are the implications of specific synergies identified between different dimensions of the experience of these heritage sites.