Purpose – This paper aims to address the central guiding questions: What principles of services management need urgent re-thinking in the Asian Century? What opportunities and challenges lie ahead?

Design/methodology/approach – This paper provides a review of relevant literature on hedonic consumption and related issues of emotion, attention, mental time travel and, importantly, how these phenomena may be measured.

Findings – The paper addresses this question from a psychological and customer perspective. Services managers are well-positioned and have a great future for two reasons. First, services in general are the growing part of the global economy. Second, services managers provide the experiences required by increasingly affluent consumers. On the other hand, there is in general within the services sector, a lack of knowledge and expertise in understanding the consumer psychology of hedonic consumption. Additionally, and especially in Western countries, there is lack of knowledge about the cultural differences in experiential requirements of Asian consumers.

Originality/value – The paper provides directions for future research in the area of tourism experiences and emotion.