A destination's competitiveness relies on its ability to successfully signal desirable experiences and deliver on what it offers. Its attractiveness, however, does not depend on its own intrinsic values as much as it depends on the value the tourist perceives. These expectations are always a subjective interpretation of how the destination will meet tourists' individual needs. The destination must therefore be able to form a special relationship with each tourist that fulfils their individual attraction. To decide on relevant service-design options in the face of the potential myriad of individual desires for experiences, the present study discusses the concepts of value, of place, of relationships, and experience. It explains how all experiences can be structured according to a few, idealised categories. These then help understand tourists' predominant value-orientations that is, how the tourist approaches the place, what attitudes drive decision-making and consumption, and how activities are pursued. Discerning processes rather than outcomes, the present discussion enables a manager to better conceive services as transformational experiences that can lead tourists to bond with the destination in a relationship that eventually reveals its own emic values, and tourists' discovery of its uniqueness.