THE EMOTIONAL LIFE OF ADVENTURE GUIDES

• Rafting guides play the guide role beyond the workplace.
• The client participates in the guides’ lifestyle.
• Previous emotional management theories failed to integrated work and leisure.
• A new emotional management framework namely Emotional Life is presented.
• The components of the Emotional Life are not apart from each other.

Adventure tourism has been widely explored in recent years as have the emotions involved in activities such as skiing, white-water rafting, rock-climbing, and sky-diving. Previous research has shown that the necessity to feel unique or different emotions is at the genesis of adventure activities and is one of the elements in the commercialisation of recreational activities and tourism. Despite the importance of the adventure tourism market, the emotions of guides and the emotional relationship between guides and clients have been ignored. This article is based on empirical research with adventure guides in Queenstown, New Zealand, and presents a new framework called “Emotional Life” formed by emotional management at work, emotional management at non-work and emotional simulacrum.