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An Uncanny Night in a Nature Bubble: Designing Embodied Sleeping Experiences

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Design Science in Tourism

Part of the book series: Tourism on the Verge ((TV))

Abstract

This article is an uncanny journey to the Bubble. It provides an autoethnographic exploration of a novel form of tourism—glamping—and takes the reader into an adventure to a see-through plastic Bubble located in a nature park in France. Moreover, it unfolds a specific form of glamping, namely sleep-centric glamping, as part of a wider sleep tourism market in which experiences are sought for by way of sleeping in extraordinary places or spaces. By taking the sleeping body as its focus, the article explores how sleeping in an extraordinary place is bodily experienced. Furthermore, it sheds light to the ways the design of this particular tourist experience is a complex array, including both humans and nature, and which inevitably enables and constrains the connection between the human body and the nature’s body. The multidisciplinary approach inherent in the article allows the authors to unfold a meaningful but indeed challenging research topic: sleep.

I hear rustle. If that is a squirrel, it must be gigantic.

Or is it so that I’m just so very little?

In a matter of fact, lying down here in my Bubble in my pyjamas, I have never felt as small and subsidiary as I do now.

I’m an alien and a friend at the same time.

Me in my plastic Bubble.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland

    Tarja Salmela, Anu Valtonen & Satu Miettinen

Authors
  1. Tarja Salmela
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  2. Anu Valtonen
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  3. Satu Miettinen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tarja Salmela .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Tourism, Recreation and Sport Management, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA

    Daniel R. Fesenmaier

  2. Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA

    Zheng Xiang

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Salmela, T., Valtonen, A., Miettinen, S. (2017). An Uncanny Night in a Nature Bubble: Designing Embodied Sleeping Experiences. In: Fesenmaier, D., Xiang, Z. (eds) Design Science in Tourism. Tourism on the Verge. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42773-7_6

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