Restaurants and the tourist market

Sparks, Beverley; Bowen, John T.; Klag, Stefanie Marie Luise

doi:10.1108/09596110310458936

Cited by 142 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Quality was regarded as the most important factor, indicating satisfaction with park restaurants is more important than variety and value of offerings as well as the experience of nature while dining in national parks. This supports Yüksel and Yüksel's (2002), Sparks et al's (2003), Correia et al's (2008) and Chang et al's (2011) findings that quality (of services and products) and diversity significantly influence the dining experience. This finding exerts a direct influence on standards, service delivery, staff training, menu options and the variety of affordable meals.…”

Section: Findings and Implicationssupporting

confidence: 78%

“…The aforementioned factors highlight the increasing importance of the travel retail and dining experiences to the overall travel experience. These further stress the important contribution that travel retail and dining experiences make to the tourist destinations' attractiveness and the influence the former exert on travellers' choice when selecting a holiday destination (Sparks, Bowen & Klag, 2003;Tsai & Lu, 2012). Although in a national park, these facilities are secondary to wildlife viewing, yet are still important from an economic and experience point of view.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Managing visitors’ dining and retail experiences in South African national parks

Kruger

Saayman

Slabbert

2015

SAJBM

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In the light of the issue of declining government funding of South African National Parks (SANParks), as well as the negative influence of the poor service levels in shops, restaurants and eating facilities in these parks on visitor spending, SANParks needs to improve the retail and dining experiences at these facilities. This research attempts to provide guidelines for SANParks management in addressing these issues, by determining visitors’ retail and dining preferences and the relationship between these constructs. Quantitative research was conducted in 2011 using a web-based survey on the SANParks’ official website for two months (1st October – 30th November). This method resulted in obtaining 5 464 usable responses for the study. Factor analyses identified three relevant dining experience factors: Quality, Variety and value and Nature ambience and four retail experience factors: Goods and services, Pricing (consisting of two separate constructs: Expensive shops and Pay more inside Park) and Quality. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this was the first time that research was conducted with regard to addressing visitors’ retail and dining preferences at any South African national park, thereby contributing significantly to literature regarding visitor experiences in a nature-based context.

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Section: Findings and Implicationssupporting

confidence: 78%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing visitors’ dining and retail experiences in South African national parks

Kruger

Saayman

Slabbert

2015

SAJBM

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“…It has been estimated that when travelling, tourists tended to spend more than one-third of their budget on food and beverages (Boyne, Hall, & Williams, 2003;Meler & Cerovic, 2003)). In one study, nearly 60 per cent of respondents claimed that restaurants at a particular travel destination were important in their decision-making process (Sparks, Bowen, & Klag, 2003). Consequently, the provision of local or regional food specialties have now been recognized as a significant growth niche, as it provides tourists with authentic, memorable and exotic experiences for which they are willing to pay extra (Smith & Costello, 2009).…”

Section: Background To the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Food tourism: consumer behaviour in relation to traditional food

Hsu¹

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Traditionally, sun, sea, and sand are the major reasons why tourists travel, however, in postmodern tourism, tourism products are no longer restricted by these types of natural resources. In order to extend the tourism life cycle and to attract more inbound tourists from overseas, more and more niche markets are developing. One such market that has been highlighted recently is food tourism. Over the past two decades, food tourism is emerging as an area of practical interest for both the host country and tourists as food is an inevitable experience at the travel destination.Food, unlike other natural resources can be provided year-round by utilizing local ingredients.For destination managers there is a need to develop a sense of regional distinctiveness and to maintain the local cultural traditions of their regions. For tourists, food provides the tourists with a novel experience and the chance to become more deeply involved in the local culture and traditions.Accordingly, because of the benefits of food tourism, it has also created interest among scholars to investigate in greater depth. However, even though the study of tourism is increasing, research issues and topics are still somewhat limited. At this stage, there is still a lack of research regarding the tourist's traditional food consumption behaviour. In redressing this omission, this study examines consumer choice behaviour of traditional Taiwanese foods. The specific objectives of this study are to: firstly, explore the food choice behaviour in relation to traditional food; secondly, to examine the impact of personality traits on tourists' traditional food choice behaviour. After a review of the literature, the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) was selected to help explain tourists' traditional food buying behaviour. This theory of TPB was used as it explained human's behaviour from the perspective of the attitude-behaviour relationship and allows the researcher to conduct empirically based research. Furthermore, personality traits have been regarded as an important factor that influences people's food choice behaviour. Therefore, in order to examine the influence of food tourism, two personality traits, food neophobia and sensation-seeking have been examined in this study.A quantitative research study design was adopted which was based on the postpostivism paradigm. A pilot survey was conducted in Australia involving 149 respondents to confirm the iii validity and reliability of the six scales used in the pilot study. As a result, the final questionnaire consisted of a total of 44 items in six different scales and two open-ended questions. The final survey was conducted using face-to-face interviews in Taiwan, with Caucasian tourists using a convenience sampling design. This resulted in 389 completed questionnaires. SPSS version 21 and AMOS version 21 were employed to analyse the numeric data and to test the hypotheses.Statistical techniques used with the pilot survey data included item analysis, reliability, and exploratory factor analysis. Fo...

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“…As shown in Table 2.1, definitions relating to the consumption of food during vacations include food tourism (Hall & Mitchell, 2001), gastronomy tourism (Kivela & Crotts, 2005), culinary tourism (Long, 1998), tasting tourism (Boniface, 2003), restaurant tourism (Sparks, Bowen, & Klag, 2003), wine tourism 21 (Brown & Getz, 2005), and gourmet tourism (Hall & Sharples, 2008). This current study uses 'food tourism' to refer to the consumption of food during a vacation.…”

Section: Food As the Centre Of This Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…• Sparks (2003) p.6 Restaurant tourism: the role of the restaurant industry in the tourism experience and destination choice.…”

Section: Food As the Centre Of This Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

The importance of food in vacation decision-making: Involvement, lifestyles and destination activity preferences of international Slow Food members

Lee¹

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Food is an important topic in the field of tourism, and has also been studied in many other disciplines. While most tourism literature considers food as an important motivating factor to travel, researchers such as McKercher, Okumus, and Okumus (2008) have suggested that the methods used to study food tourists do not examine the reasons for travel; instead they provide only tenuous causal relationships between actions (visiting a food destination) and motives (wanting to eat food).Thus, a more holistic approach to studying food tourists is required to better define the relationship between tourists' motivation to travel to a destination and their participation in food-related experiences. Therefore, this study examines the vacation decision-making of a group of Slow Food members with a high interest in food in terms of how they select their vacation destinations and their activities in those destinations.Vacation decision-making is a complex process with different stages. Of the different decisionmaking models available to study this process, the FLAG (fits-like-a-glove) theory was adopted as the framework in this study. This model has a naturalistic approach that considers decision-making as a process, and that each individual's decision is influenced by their past experiences (Woodside, 2006). While many underlying variables influence decision-making, two that require further investigation are involvement and lifestyle.This study aimed to understand how food is important in the vacation decision-making of Slow Food members; thus, it examined Slow Food members' destination activity preferences based on their involvement and lifestyle. The Slow Food movement is a non-profit foundation with over 20 years of history and over 100,000 members in 150 countries around the world. The philosophy of Slow Food is based on acquiring 'good, clean and fair' food. "Good food is defined as being tasty and diverse, and produced in such a way as to maximise its flavour and connections to a geographic and cultural region. Clean food is sustainable, helping to preserve rather than destroy the environment, while fair food is produced in socially sustainable ways that emphasise social justice and fair wages" (Schneider, 2008, p. 390).In order to achieve its aim and objectives, the study adopted a mixed methods exploratory research approach. In Phase 1, 40 interviews were conducted with international Slow Food members from four continents to identify their vacation decision-making, food-related lifestyle, travel lifestyle and destination activity preferences. Data analysed in Phase 1 was used in the development of a destination activity preferences scale included in Phase 2. In Phase 2, an online survey of Slow Food members and an on-site survey of non-Slow Food participants were carried out. These surveys iii collected 337 valid responses from international Slow Food members and 207 valid responses from non-Slow Food participants.Thematic analysis was employed to analyse the qualitative data collected in Phase 1 assisted by ...

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Restaurants and the tourist market

Cited by 142 publications

References 4 publications

Managing visitors’ dining and retail experiences in South African national parks

Managing visitors’ dining and retail experiences in South African national parks

Food tourism: consumer behaviour in relation to traditional food

The importance of food in vacation decision-making: Involvement, lifestyles and destination activity preferences of international Slow Food members

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