The rapid development of tourism, fierce competition between tourism entities and the awareness of tourists about what products they want, encourage the tourism industry to create an authentic supply. The aim of this paper was to investigate how the tourist experience is formed, to explain the concepts closely related to the experience and to analyze the formation of the experience in the context of cultural and rural tourism. The formation of the tourist experience is influenced by various factors such as: physical challenge, group assimilation, use of personal resources, involvement in the present, participation through stories from personal life, landscape and many others. The experience can be described as an emotional, spiritual, psychological learning process and as a transformational process that affects the inclusion of tourists in the experience. Concepts also play a role in the formation of experience: the economy of experience, "servicescape" and "experiencescape". Visitor interactions with other visitors and a guide in the destination play a key role in the decision to engage in the experience. Cultural tourism provides tourists with a complete experience through getting to know the culture and interacting with the local population and other visitors. Rural tourism contains activities related to nature, entertainment, education and many others, and when "storytelling" is included, then it is a source of knowledge, wisdom and culture. Gaining the trust of tourists in the host, will encourage tourists to come back to the rural area. The analysis in this paper proves that the creators of the tourist supply should form their offer based on the information they receive through the use of the concepts of experience economy, "servicescape" and "experiencescape".