Disappointment in tourism: Perspectives on tourism destination management

•A new perspective, disappointment management, on emotion management in a tourism context is addressed.•Key causes, sources, and factors of disappointment are described.•A sympathetic design and operational framework of disappointment management are discussed.

The range of components involved in the construction of tourist expectations and the influence these expectations generate on consumer satisfaction have been analyzed by tourism and marketing researchers. However, the causes and consequences of negative emotions such as disappointment seem to be neglected. Tourists' high expectations should be met not only by the services sector, but also by the tourism destination itself. Service insufficiency, or the failure of the travel experience, along with other risk factors may lead to tourists' dissatisfaction. This paper aims to create a better understanding of negative emotional attributes related to tourism destinations by investigating the causes, factors, and consequences of tourists' disappointment by developing a model of the phenomenon. This paper offers practical implications for destination managers and discusses how the causes of disappointment might be eliminated, or minimized, and that tourists can be compensated for disappointing experiences.