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This paper examines the multiple ways in which notions of identity and associated cultural values are entangled in the management and operation of commercial hospitality spaces. The paper reviews literature on experience, identity and hospitality operations management within the experience paradigm and argues that existing work provides limited insights into how identities are ‘experientialised’ within hospitality venues. Empirical data are used to demonstrate how management and consumers mobilise direct and associative references to identity. The paper conceptualises the processes involved in venue operation through the notion of inducement, and it discusses the spatial, material, performative and representational practices in the creation of hospitality experiences.

The relationship between identity and hospitality experiences is well documented. Previous work by anthropologists and geographers has examined how transactions of hospitality, involving food, drink, offers of shelter and social interaction may be used to express identity, status and power (Bell & Valentine, 1997; Selwyn, 2000; Wilson, 2005). Research has also considered how providers in commercial contexts manipulate the servicescape and mobilise signifiers of identity and cultural values to communicate with customers, direct their behaviour and shape their consumption experiences (Lin, 2004; Lugosi, 2009; O'Mahony, Hall, & Binney, 2006). However, this paper posits that current work examining the relationship between identity, hospitality and the management of operations offers limited understanding of how identities and associated cultural values are ‘experientialised’ i.e. how symbolically laden, emotionally charged, immersive, multi-sensory experiences that draw on notions of identity and culture as guiding reference points emerge or operate in venues. The paper considers social scientific literature considering the interactions of hospitality and identity, drawn from the disciplines of geography, sociology and anthropology, and literature on hospitality experience management. It is argued that the former body of work offers numerous insights into the mobilisation of cultural values and the articulation of identities within hospitality settings, but does not consider management issues. Conversely, experience management literature examines such related issues as theming, but does not provide adequate insights into how cultural values and notions of identities are incorporated into experience production. The paper draws on empirical data to demonstrate how particular constructions of identity intersect with notions of ethnicity, nationality, gender, class and sexuality in creating hospitality experiences. It is argued that the experientialisation of identity involves the selective reconstruction and mobilisation of culturally specific expressions of values and behaviours by the operators, and it also involves consumers' performances of selves and their identification with or against particular notions of identity. It is important to stress that this paper is not concerned with hospitality and subjective experiences of identity i.e. how consumers feel about or relate to particular discourses of self. Rather, it focuses on how discourses of identity are distilled, juxtaposed and mobilised as organisational resources. The paper's approach is broadly in the actor-network theory (ANT) tradition (Latour, 2005; Lugosi & Erdélyi, 2009; Van der Duim, Ren, & Jóhannesson, 2013). ANT as a methodology seeks to examine the actors, actions, processes and relationships through which things come into being (Latour, 2005). There are three principal areas of interest within this perspective relevant to the current study: first, the different human and non-human actors or actants; second, enactments i.e. how actors/actants and their networks of relationships perform knowledge and agency, resulting in particular outcomes; and enrolment, i.e. how various (human and non-human) actors/actants are mobilised within these enactments or performances. This paper examines a hospitality/tourism venue/event called The Church which has been operating since 1979, and it accounts for the practices and processes through which management and consumers co-create notions of identity and culture through the experience. The paper conceptualises the processes involved in venue operation through the notion of inducement, and it discusses the spatial, material, performative and representational practices in the creation of hospitality experiences. It is argued that identifying specific practices of inducement within this research context helps to construct a broader thematic framework for understanding how identities may be entangled and mobilised within hospitality experiences in other contexts. By doing so, this paper, therefore, responds to emerging calls to examine critically the relationship between identity and spatial dimensions of hospitality (e.g. Lugosi, 2009; Lynch, Germann Molz, McIntosh, Lugosi, & Lashley, 2011) by mapping the entanglement of material, embodied, representational and symbolic practices in the production of space. This contributes to knowledge in two key ways: first, it broadens our understanding of the processes through which particular spaces are created or rendered hospitable. It thus contributes to current work examining the nature of hospitality in contemporary society and how it operates in different social contexts (cf. Lugosi, 2009; Lynch et al., 2011). Second, it builds upon and advances our understanding of experience management (cf. Gilmore & Pine, 2002; O'Mahony et al., 2006) by offering a context-sensitive conception of the complex processes of co-creation through which hospitality experiences are constructed.

This paper contributes to knowledge in several ways. First, it provides detailed insight into an unexamined context, The Church, as both a hospitality/tourism operation and experience. Second, it provides a nuanced examination of the processes and practices involved in the operation of The Church, with particular reference to the ways in which notions of culture and identity were mobilised in the co-creation of experience. Third, and more broadly, it provides an alternative way to conceptualise and interrogate operations management, including how notions of culture and identity are entangled in experience creation. Each of these three themes is elaborated on below. At the level of the specific research context, The Church was an extreme type of hospitality offering in which hedonistic forms of consumption and social organisation were closely tied to institutionalised processes of control. This paper has argued that The Church's existence can be conceptualised through the notion of inducement – the ongoing practices of mobilisation, involving spatial, material, performative and representational practices, which perpetuated the experiential possibilities of this space. It was argued that notions of identity were entangled in the production of The Church in multiple ways. Themes of commonality and collectivity were historically part of The Church's existence: they were the reasons for its establishment and continued to create symbolic focal points for its visitors. The paper has also argued that notions of identity, mobilised through multiple practices, were evident throughout The Church's operation. Stressing belonging, inclusion and exclusion through the roll call of nations, competitive games and ridicule mobilised particular expressions of identity or identification among its consumers. Moreover, through the celebration of hedonistic consumption and the objectification of women, notions of antipodean identities became blurred with particular articulations of class, gender and sexuality, which reproduced hetero-normative and hetero-patriarchal power relationships. Carnivalesque celebration of these similarities and differences in identity and identification thus helped to perpetuate the experiential model for this hospitality space. Moving beyond the specific case, it is possible to argue that all hospitality operations involve entanglements of identity, and rely, in various degrees, on organisational-consumer co-creation in creating the experience. Consequently, the emerging themes from this study have a number of managerial implications and they also open up a several avenues of research. First, this study has shown the multiple ways in which identity is entangled in the experiential proposition and the actual experience. It is useful for operators to foreground questions of identity in designing and marketing their experiential propositions. In the case of The Church the core identity ‘mooring’ was antipodean-ness, which then emerged in multiple aspects of the experience (through the practices of inducement discussed above). However, the data in this study also suggested that direct references were only one part of the experience. It also pointed to several associative references, which can be linked, albeit indirectly, to conceptions of identity. Again, for operators designing and reviewing their experiential propositions, it is important to evaluate how associative references are entangled; and more specifically, how they can be mobilised as organisational resources. Notions of shared cultural value and identity may be part of the overarching proposition for a particular hospitality or tourism experience, or it may be included in one or several part(s) of the broader experience. Moreover, people's relationship with the experience, which is directly linked to their potential for co-creation, may involve notions of identity through either: reinforcement, transformation through extension, transformation through contraction or contrast. For example, the experience, or part of the experience, may complement and thus reinforce existing notions of self. In the case of The Church, consuming and co-creating the experience may have reinforced existing notions of antipodean identity at least within the context of the experiential setting. The experience may offer opportunities to transform, through extension, notions of self. In the Church, the competitions and invocation of national difference through mocking references by the compère, for example, undoubtedly amplified notions of nationalistic pride during parts of the experience. However, experiences may also transform through contraction notions of self. Again, in the case of The Church, some consumers withdrew from certain articulations of antipodean-ness, e.g. in resisting pressures to perform actions (such as competitions, exhibitionism or sexual objectification) that were expected or normalised in that experiential setting. The experiential proposition may also stand in contrast to notions of self; although, disassociation may not stop people co-creating the experience. In the case of The Church, dissenting commentary on social media websites continues to perpetuate the place-image and place-myths surrounding the experience. Consequently, examining in other contexts people's reactions to and relationships with the experiential propositions may offer a useful way to understand where and how their co-creation, as practice, would operate. Examining the different interactions of experience, co-creation and identity may also help to understand whether these had temporary, short-term or more fundamental, long-term changes in notions of identity and identification amongst consumers, thus influencing future attitudes and/or behaviours. Second, this study has demonstrated how the construction of the experience relies on spatial, material, performative and representational practices of inducement in which various aspects of identity are entangled. Conceptualising hospitality venue operation as inducement, involving various practices, can help sensitise other operators and researchers seeking to deconstruct or interrogate other hospitality experiences. This offers a thematic framework for planning future hospitality operations and for evaluating how practices operate in existing hospitality contexts. Moreover, rather than adopting an organisation-centric view of experience creation and conceptualising it as a series of neatly functioning components in a service sequence (cf. Bitner, Ostrom, & Morgan, 2008), it conceptualises it as a dynamic processes in which multiple objects, actions and agencies interact. Practitioners and researchers drawing on this ‘practices perspective’ in their planning and evaluation of hospitality spaces can thus appreciate that a) experiences are always a set of organisational propositions, which operators may try to orchestrate, but cannot always guarantee, b) these propositions are only realised through co-creation, and, importantly, c) such propositions are only transformed into actual experiences through ongoing (spatial, material, representational and performative) practices. This study had several limitations. First, this study did not attempt to focus on consumers' perspectives and the subjective experiences of The Church. Second, it did not incorporate frontline staff's perspectives on the experiential construction. Third, utilising a qualitative, inductive approach in a particular organisational setting makes generalisations problematic. However, it should be restated that the study was exploratory in nature and attempted to extrapolate from the case study (Patton, 2002) rather than test theory or particular hypotheses. Moreover, the notion of inducement and the proposition that future research can utilise the practices framework in conceptualising experiential contexts means the study's outcomes have potential ‘transferability’ (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Future research can consider how consumers perceived and evaluated the experiential setting. Further qualitative studies, utilising participant observation, interviews and ‘investigative internet research’ (Lugosi et al., 2012), can examine consumers' broader subjective experiences before, during and after The Church. This can examine in particular their oral, textual and visual representational practices, both in person and through social media. Future studies could also consider in further detail the dynamics of their performative practices, including their motivations for investing in particular forms of co-creation e.g. making costumes, body modification, co-attendance, spectacular displays and interaction. Extending this, studies could examine how notions of self-concept, belonging and identification influenced their consumption or were, in turn, affected by consumption. Qualitative approaches could also be utilised to capture frontline staff's perceptions of their overall experiential propositions, alongside their perceptions of the roles that they, their colleagues, consumers and other agents such as cultural commentators had in inducement and the (re)creation of the hospitality experience. Such research may consider frontline staff's perspectives on adopting particular spatial, material, performative and representational practices. It can also consider the risks, challenges and benefits associated with such practices, for example, in terms of human resources, operations management, marketing, licensing and legislation, ethics and revenue management. Beyond the case study context, future research can attempt to evaluate the transferability of the thematic framework for conceptualising, planning and evaluating other types of experiential hospitality settings. Furthermore, if the themes raised in this study were adopted in future studies, researchers and practitioners can examine, through qualitative and quantitative research, the various marketing, operational and experiential functions that spatial, material, performative and representational practices may have in different organisational settings. Beyond assessing their functions, it would also be useful to examine the different impacts such practices have on consumer behaviour in the venue as well as beyond it in terms of satisfaction and future consumption decisions.