Five Reasons Awe & Wonder Matter More Than Ever

The more time I spend working in transformative experience design for tourism, hospitality, wellness, and conservation, the more I find myself returning to Awe and Wonder as some of the most powerful and under-appreciated forces shaping meaningful human experience.

I think many of us intuitively know what Awe feels like because we have experienced those moments where time seems to slow down, you feel alive, perspective expands, words fail us, and something about our relationship to ourselves, nature, or the world quietly shifts.

What fascinates me is that Awe and Wonder are not only emotionally and spiritually important, but increasingly important strategically as well, especially as travel and hospitality move more deeply into the emerging Transformation Economy.

Five reasons I believe Awe and Wonder matter so deeply:

1.) Awe and Wonder often function as threshold experiences that soften certainty, deepen attention, expand perspective, and open people to transformation in ways traditional experiences often do not.

2.) Experiences intentionally designed around Awe and Wonder create stronger emotional resonance, memory formation, perceived value, guest loyalty, and long-term differentiation in an increasingly commoditized and AI-driven world.

3.) The future of travel and hospitality will increasingly be rooted not simply in luxury, personalization, or logistics, but in helping people feel more connected, alive, restored, inspired, and meaningfully changed.

4.) Experiences of Awe and Wonder in nature have been shown to increase humility, stewardship, empathy, and ecological awareness, which may make them one of the missing links in many of our sustainability and conservation efforts.

5.) Awe and wonder can strike you at any time. As an experience designer, they can also be thoughtfully cultivated through pacing, anticipation, storytelling, silence, beauty, challenge, sensory immersion, meaning making, relational depth, and intentional experience design.

That is a big part of why I’m excited to launch TTC’s new Level 400 Deep Dive: Designing for Awe & Wonder this fall.

Grounded in Dr. Dacher Keltner's research on the eight sources of awe, this five-week program is designed for experienced practitioners who want to intentionally cultivate experiences that shift perception and stay with people long after they return home.

More than anything, this feels like an invitation to go down the rabbit hole together for the first time as a cohort of seekers and explore what Awe and Wonder might teach us about ourselves, stewardship, hospitality, experience design, and the future of meaningful travel itself.

If this lights you up, I’d genuinely love to have you join me from September 14 to October 16, 2026.

Early bird pricing available through June 30.
Register here!