Evaluation of Foreign Visitors Turkish Cuisine Experiences on Tripadvisor, an Online Platform: The Case of İstanbul-Beyoğlu

Abstract

The present study aimed to evaluate the Turkish cuisine experiences of foreign visitors through Tripadvisor, an online platform. In line with this purpose, 82 different food establishments with the concept of "Historical Turkish Restaurants, Esnaf Restaurants (restaurants where many dishes from Turkish cuisine are served and the customer prefers one of the options), and Kebap/Pide/Ocakbasi Restaurants (kebab restaurants that serve their customers at tables around a grill)" in the Beyoğlu district of Istanbul Province and included in the Tripadvisor website were analyzed. The content analysis technique, one of the qualitative study methods, was employed in the study. The ranking was from the restaurants that received the most visitor reviews between 2021 and 2022 to the restaurants that received the fewest reviews in order to obtain the total number of reviews on the Tripadvisor website. Especially post-pandemic comments were analyzed to ensure that the data were up-to-date and evaluable. The research data is limited to positive foreign visitor comments in the most common seven different foreign languages between 2021 and 2022. The research resulted in a total of 3455 positive reviews of Turkish cuisine restaurants in the last year (2021-2022). In order of importance, these positive comments are grouped under the categories of taste, service, price, menu, quality, location, and hospitality. These also revealed that foreign visitors focused most on the "taste and service" categories. The absence of any other study examining the Istanbul-Beyoğlu region in previous online evaluation studies emphasizes the importance of this study. This study is thought to shed light on the studies to be conducted in the future, especially on Turkish cuisine.