Through the influence of recently changing markets in tourism, new products using the engineering of experience are being developed in outdoor activities such as hik-ing. This is happening even though the possibilities of the creation and the prediction of the character of other peoples ́ experiences is highly controversial. This grounded-theory study aims to discuss the potential and limits of experience engineering or staging experiences in outdoor activities especially in hiking. Focused on

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... he example of hiking on the "Rothaarsteig" trail the strategies and themes of experience engineering of this trail were extracted from data consisting of planner ́s materials, expert interviews and promotional literature. Additional data was collected from a sample of n=31 adult hikers (both male and female), who hiked parts of the trail or the whole trail in the summer of 2008. This was accomplished using qualitative methods such as visitor employed photography, photo elicitation and pho-tograph logs. The data was completed by having the hikers take part in a modified form of focus group at their final destination showing a selection of the hikers ́ photo-graphs on a large screen to provoke comments from the hikers concerning their ex-perience during their hike. All data was analyzed using QDA software through which codes, concepts and categories of both expected and actual experiences were pro-cessed. Finally, the extracted concepts of experience engineering and the aimed-for-experiences were compared with the actual experiences of hikers. As the main re-sults reveal: • the existing concepts of experience engineering of the "Rothaarsteig" are based on the layout and the surface of the trail, the construction and im-provement of experience infrastructure (e.g. platforms, bridges, info-boards) and human capital (rangers) • through these concepts the planners and operators of the trail aim for a large variety of experience to [...]